THE AGRARIAN GEOGRAPHY IN THE DIDACTIC BOOKS: FIRST APPROACHES FOR A CRITICISM OF THE CONTENT THAT IS TAUGHT AT SCHOOL

Abstract

One of the premises presented is that the contents of agrarian geography present in the didactic books in the primary schools do not contemplate the reality of the Brazilian agrarian space. Regarding such criticism we analyzed 5 among 10 geography didactic collections approved by National Plan of the Didactic Book (Plano Nacional do Livro Didático) for the year of 2011. We have used an assessment guide to comprehend the concepts of geography that are present in our didactic books. We verified from this analysis that some collections reproduce the positivist geography, which quantify the agriculture products produced in different regions of the country. The other three collections observed prioritize the social relationships of production in the field, discussing the agrarian concentration and the Agrarian Reformation in order to raise questions for a more critical teaching in the classroom. However, the contents are not discussed in the perspective of spatial totality, they separate the modern agriculture from the environmental issues, the relation between agriculture and industry is dealt in a harmonic form, conceptual mistakes are made, for instance: when confusing capitalized income with profit or when conceptualizing industry of the field with synonymous of agribusiness. The distinction among the models of agriculture production in the field that the geographical landscape shows, the agribusiness and peasant agriculture are not done.