IDENTITY LESSONS IN EARLY-YEAR ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS

Abstract

While novel technologies spread throughout the country, the role textbooks play in classrooms is unquestionable. Further than a tool widely used by (fe)male teachers in their educational practices, textbooks are cultural artefacts producing knowledge. Multiple cultural pedagogies are present and circulate in them, teaching lessons that go much further the curricular content, encouraging (fe)male students to be in particular subject positions. From these observations, the present paper is devoted to analysing the current, active and cultural pedagogies in textbooks, most specifically the so-called gauchismo pedagogy, a term that was coined to designate how people learn to be a (fe)male Gaucho in different social and cultural situations. The study has investigated how the gauchismo pedagogy is present in early-year elementary-school history textbooks, from 1960 to 2005, its recurrences and ruptures. Data point to a prevailing way to understand the Gaucho identity, particularly relating it the symbolic and mythic Gaucho. This prevailing representation is a strong cultural pedagogy, producing knowledge, which teaches how to be a Gaucho, encouraging (fe)male students to be in subject positions and identify with this pedagogy.Key-words: Cultural pedagogies; Gauchismo Pedagogy; textbooks.