Teaching history and dilemmas of permanent peripherialization. (In)consistent comments about the province of Formosa

Abstract

In this paper we make a first approach to the lofts of neoliberalization processes in a sub-national Argentine jurisdiction, peripheral, and the way in which political entrepreneurs try to design an educational policy appropriate to it, with their demands not always consistent with the consolidation of a new political elite configured since the return of political democracy in Argentina. The official edition of school curricular materials, is part of the educational reforms undertaken by the provincial government since 2005. In this line, the instrumental exacerbation at the expense of the complexity of disciplinary knowledge, will be the characteristic note of the transformations. The contents of the texts distributed by the Provincial Pedagogical Institute offer an approach to the Formosa past that does not exceed the limits of a monumental, localist and presentist history, without counterexamples or updating the most current historiographical perspectives. The discourse of the capacities, is oriented to organize the curriculum, the teaching and the evaluation, putting the focus in a series of central capacities, minimizing the intellectual work of the teacher and locating it like a simple organizer of processes. It is not an educator who develops a critical and transforming spirit of society, but a harmless companion able to ensure the fulfillment of measurable ‘goals’ of teaching.