Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
6.2 Analysis of the Socio-historical Evolution in School
Cartography Contents
A research conducted by Callai (
1999
) with a sector of students and teachers of
secondary education in Brazilian state schools, in the middle of the nineties,
revealed that, for the majority of people interviewed, Geography seems to be
extremely fragmented and naturalistic. In this sense, names of places, their locali-
zation and mainly their natural characteristics are studied, once “Physical Geogra-
phy” is a field in this subject considered to be the most “scientific”, because is more
observable and objective than “Human Geography”. Besides, according to the
above-mentioned research, for the interviewees, the ideas of “map” and “Cartogra-
phy” are inseparable from “Geography”. For them, these concepts are practically
synonyms. Martinelli (
2000
) also highlights this aspect in his thesis, writing that:
When we talk about 'maps', immediately we associate them with 'Geography'. It is a
cultural aspect. Maps, therefore, would represent Geography, what is geographic. They
would be Geography themselves. [
] In this sense, we can verify that a map is a symbolic
...
]
We understand that this representation in the imagination of people is a socio-
historical construction whose origin is at schools, in the Cartography contents
worked by Geography teachers. It is a knowledge dictated by the curricular
programmes and especially by the textbooks published and used in Brazil in the
last two centuries. During this period, the cartographic contents have been worked,
roughly, in the volumes regarding the first years of secondary education. And these
contents are our main focus of analysis on this study.
representation of Geography. [
...
6.3 The Selection of Documents and Method of Work
Information and data collection for this research in documentary sources were
carried out based on the Library of Textbooks (BLD) collection, located at the
Faculty of Education of Universidade de S˜o Paulo. We complemented the survey
of textbooks, asking the most important Brazilian publishers for an authorization to
look up their private collections, in a way to have access to the major works
published in Brazil during the specified period. We had permission to consult the
private collections from the following publishers: Saraiva, FTD, Scipione,
´
tica
and Abril Educa¸˜o.
Besides consulting the publishers' collections, we had access to available
documents at the Documentation Department and Memory of Col´gio Pedro II
(NUDOM), in Rio de Janeiro, where we consulted the minutes of the Teachers
Council, Geography compendia and theses regarding the school since its establish-
ment. Col´gio Pedro II was the first institution of secondary education created in
Brazil, in 1837, in the same traditional mold of French coll
`
ges and lic
`
es. Until the
end of the fifties, the teaching staff of Col
´
gio Pedro II was entrusted by the State
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