Schoolbooks in their material and symbolic dimensions

Abstract

The text reports on an ongoing study about people's memories of schoolbooks. The reflections are based on oral histories and on the conduction and analysis of interviews with pupils and teachers from various places in Brazil, and which interacted with schoolbooks within the school environment between the 1940s and 1970s. The proposal has been to investigate the reminiscences of the schoolbook, which of them point to their influence in the social and cultural education of the users, as well as in the constitution of their imaginaries; the social, educational and cultural roles achieved by the schoolbook in the education of generations and/or localities; and finally the values attributed to those objects, which guide, for instance, attitudes towards their guard and preservation. The present study is part of a larger project entitled "Education and memory: organization of collections of schoolbooks" coordinated by Dr Circe Bittencourt from the Faculty of Education, USP. That project has researchers working on different problems, from various fields of knowledge, and utilizing distinct sources in their work. In that sense, the present study seeks to contribute also to the identification of sources that may be of use in increasing the overall information available to foster or supplement other possible researches about this object of study.