Ana Carolina Galvão Marsiglia UM QUARTO DE ... - Home - Unesp

ABSTRACT
The state of São Paulo is the main trading, corporate and financial center of Brazil.
The Ministry of Education of São Paulo (SEE) manages more than 200 000 teachers,
four million students and five thousand schools. Given these numbers, it appears to
reveal the importance of political education in state schools of São Paulo. Our central
thesis is that constructivism, implemented by the Ministry of Education of São Paulo
in 1983, is a strategical element of its educational policy and has decisive implications
for the low quality of education for students of São Paulo. The object of this research
is therefore the constructivist pedagogical concept and its conversion in the official
documents of the Ministry of Education of São Paulo. The aim of this work is to
examine, in the light of historical-critical pedagogy, the relation between
constructivism as a pedagogical framework and the educational policy of the state
governments of Sao Paulo namely André Franco Montoro, Orestes Quercia, Luiz
Antonio Fleury Filho, Mário Covas Júnior Geraldo Jose Rodrigues Alckmin Filho and
Jose Serra, setting in the context of production and implementation of programs and
documents from the SEE, especially those published by the Department of Studies
and Pedagogical Standards (CENP) and Foundation for the Development of Education
(FDE) for the first cycle of basic education in the period 1983 to 2008. The method of
data collection and analysis of this work is the historical dialectical materialism
method, which relies on the concepts of contradiction, totality and historicity. Our
conclusions refer to the fact that constructivism as affiliated to neoliberalism and
postmodernism has been adopted for the adjustment to the hegemonic interests of
the dominant class obscuring true emancipator education by highlighting
assumptions which undermine the possibilities of schooling as an actual contributor
to overcome the capitalist society.
Keywords: Constructivism. Historical and critical pedagogy. Ministry of Education of
São Paulo.