Teaching Social Sciences in Brazil today

Abstract

In a recent period Brazil has been going through a deep political crisis, the most emblematic moment of which was the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in 2016. Two years later, Jair Bolsonaro was elected President of the Republic, with a political platform based on combating violence and corruption, and on a moral agenda that includes combating “gender ideology” and “cultural Marxism”. In this context, the social sciences come to be strongly attacked in the public sphere, by spreading the idea that teachers are “ideologically indoctrinating” students in the classroom. In this article I analyze the challenges for teaching social sciences in Brazil today in this political scenario. Methodologically the article focuses on documentary and bibliographic analysis. I carried out a bibliographic review with the most recent publications on the current political situation in Brazil, as well as examined statements by the president of the republic and the two ministers of education that there was in his government on the social sciences. There was a scenario of political inflection, marked by an attack on the social sciences in the public sphere, with a focus on school subjects. Despite the data pointing to a challenging scenario for social science teachers, I argue that it is precisely in these contexts that these sciences are most necessary, considering their role in the formation for the citizenship and the commitment to a democratic project for society.