Educational work and scientific knowledge: the historical critical pedagogy and the teacher’s role

Abstract

This article is result of debates and reflections gestated in two study groups about the Historical Critical Pedagogy performed in 2019, the year when this important Brazilian educational theory completed 40 years. This text analyses the importance of the scientific knowledge in basic education in conjuction with the teachers work. It starts from two guiding questions: what is the relation between teachers work and the historically accumulated scientific knowledge? What knowledge is needed by the teacher? In order to achieve the objective the text was structured in three moments: 1 – presentation of the context of elaboration of the Historical Critical Pedagogy; 2- Debate about the nature and specificity of the education to this critical theory; 3- analysis of the teacher’s function in conjuction with the scientific knowledge, as well as the necessary knowledge for an emancipatory educational practice. From the discussion, founded in a bibliographic research, it is possible to conclude that the Historical Critical Pedagogy professes the education as a fighting instrument of the working class, instrumentalization of the proletariat in the fight against the process of exploitation and in direction to a greater project of overcoming the capitalist mode of production. From the reality point of view it means to fight for the public school, which, on basic education may be understood as teaching the classical content, defending a quality public school for the working classes and assuming a theoretical and practical positioning based on the historical and dialectical materialism.