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Desafios para a superação das desigualdades sociaisdifferent semioses (words, images etc.) with a pedagogical purpose? Therefore, if teachers use it as atool to take students to the interpretation of reality, the coursebook should become excellent materialfor understanding the real world. Despite its good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate content, theteacher can work through coursebooks with students to discuss their knowledge and build relevantmeanings. In this sense, the assumptions of critical discourse analysis (FAIRCLOUGH, 2001) can beof great value to help the teacher de-naturalize crystalized meanings and (re)think reality critically,with a view towards social transformation.So, instead of presenting crystalized knowledge, the teacher can use this to educate learnersabout the contradictions of society in which they live, raising awareness for "values, prejudices andideological concepts contained in the coursebook" (FREITAG et al., 1997, p. 78), using its contents todenounce prejudices, false conceptions of the world and biased treatments given to certain specifictopics. The books tend to conceal, omit or distort the social contradictions, presenting them as "liesthat seem truths" (BONAZZI & ECO, 1980).Criticism to the ideologies of a supposed dominant class present in coursebooks, however, donot realize that the "appropriateness" of the material to the learner’s reality cannot, in any way,account for only a particular social class and social contexts to which the students who use a specificbook (supposedly) belong to (FREITAG et al., 1997). This would only contribute to greatersegregation and marginalization. Portraying the reality of a single social class is also a way to continueignoring differences. In addition to not contributing to the solution or transformation of the problem, itcollaborates with its consolidation.Moreover, the contents and values worked out by coursebooks and the students’ realities areoften dissociated (OLIVEIRA et al., 1984). The coursebook can be said to be, therefore, a pedagogicaltool with an anti-pedagogical purpose: "format" students according to certain worldviews, makingthem alienated from the realities in which they live and depriving them from free culture and identityexpression.It is also important to take learners to question the role of the coursebook in teaching, since itcan serve as part of the development of their critical thinking skills (SOUZA, 1999c). Students usuallyexpect coursebooks to be used in full, step by step, and with none of their pages or contents skipped.This demand is a non-critical stance in relation to education (SOUZA, 1995b), which can be modifiedby the teacher. In order to take on the role of an intellectual transformer (GIROUX, 1997), the teachernot only uses the coursebook critically, but also raises critical awareness on their students – eventhrough discussion about the coursebook itself.Teaching learners to take a critical stance regarding coursebooks could be a way to demystifytheir place of absolute truth as an unquestionable document in teaching. In his Archaeology ofknowledge, Foucault ([1969] 2002) believes that, to traditional History, "the document was alwaystreated as the language of a voice since reduced to silence, its fragile, but possibly decipherable trace"(FOUCAULT, [1969] 2002, p. 7). That is, the documents contain the truth, and it would behoove tothe historian to discover and decipher it. The same seems to apply to coursebooks in educationalcontexts, since it is taken as the single and universal source of reference for the classroom (SOUZA,1995a). As well as History changed its way to view documents, no longer as containing absolutetruths, but interpreting them, Teaching may also rethink the use of coursebooks (SOUZA, 1995a).3 MACRO CRITERIA FOR COURSEBOOK EVALUATIONSeveral lists with detailed criteria for the analysis of language coursebooks have beenproposed (BYRD, 2001; CUNNINGSWORTH, 1995; DAVIES, 2009). The goal here is to proposeonly maro criteria, with no deeper level of detail, thus making the analysis flexible according to thespecificities of each context of use – not all aspects of a coursebook are equally important in allcontexts of teaching and learning. The coursebook, however, must meet some minimum principles,which are here encompassed by macro criteria. Depending on the context, teachers must also seekother criteria (even their own criteria, as a result of their teaching practice in a given context) to furtherexamine certain aspects that are particularly important for their reality.Before proposing any criteria for coursebook analysis, it is necessary to have in mind clear466