A lei 10.639/2003 No Currículo Formal da Rede Municipal de Educação de Sousa – PB: um olhar para os cadernos de atividades complementares dos anos do ensino fundamental.

Abstract

Law No. 10.639/2003, which makes the teaching of Afro-Brazilian and African History and Culture mandatory, turned 21 in January 2024. However, its implementation still occurs largely through individual initiatives of teachers, without proper formal curricular systematization by educational institutions. Thus, this study aimed to understand the place of Law No. 10.639/2003 within the scope of the Complementary Activity Notebooks (CACs) as a formal curriculum for the Initial Years of Elementary Education in the public education system of the municipality of Sousa - PB. The CACs present themselves as a didactic resource, but due to the requirements on the part of the municipality to use them, they end up being configured as a formal curriculum that shapes pedagogical practices in the context researched. Specifically, the research proposed to identify, in the CACs, the elements that indicate possible pedagogical approaches of the referred Law; to analyze the curricular components of the Early Years of Elementary - School where the teaching of the theme “Afro-Brazilian and African History and Culture” is proposed ( directly and/ or insed on the CACs; and to investigate the gaps in the curriculum in relation to the implementation of Law 10.639/2003 in Sousa-PB. Regarding the methodology, the research adopted a qualitative approach, based on the documentary analysis of the CACs used in the municipality. To analyze the data, we used elements of the Content Analysis proposed by Bardin. The results showed that, despite some specific approaches with mastery, there is still a significant lack in the systematic integration of the content discussed here, applied in the formal curriculum of the municipal education of Sousa-PB. The analysis revealed that in the analyzed curriculum there are superficial mentions about ethnic-racial diversity and more specific references to African culture; however, these approaches are still (very) limited and do not address knowledge of the black population. It was possible to verify that, although the CACs contemplate the theme at times, this proposal occurs in a mitigated way. The curricular components end up referencing African culture only in allusion to commemorative dates or/and in isolated activities that are not centralized to the protagonism of the black population. The research also identified that one of the main gaps is the absence of curricular guidelines adopted by the municipal education system of Sousa that help the teaching team to plan and apply consistent practices on the theme of Teaching Afro-Brazilian and African History and Culture.