PHILOSOPHY IN HIGH SCHOOL: WHAT IS TRANSMITTED WHEN IT IS PRESUPPOSED TO TRANSMIT PHILOSOPHICAL KNOWLEDGE?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to problematize what is transmitted when Philosophy teaching in high school is grounded on the educational assumption of knowledge transmission. Under the inspiration of Ranciere's critiques about the logics of explanation/transmission of knowledge, it is thought how Philosophy teachers' practices set possibilities of learning Philosophy. It is shown that what is transmitted is a way of relating Philosophy and the present time rather than an essential knowledge for Philosophy, which, in the possession of students, could develop their philosophical capacities. For this reason, it is argued that, instead of stimulating and exercising the philosophical thought of the present - goal of the subject in this educational context - it is transmitted a descriptive-doctrinal practice of the History of Philosophy, a decal of a consolidated technical-academic heritage in the 1960s at the University of Sao Paulo. This heritage, implemented in Brazil in a partial and propaedeutical way, is centered on Goldschmidt and Gueroult's structuralist technique of text explanation, whose practices allow us to enunciate the figure of teacher-explainer: explainer because he occupies a specific function in the logics of explanation/transmission of knowledge; and explainer because of the methodological resource that supports the supposed transmission of its knowledge, the structuralist technique of explanation of texts. The article is developed in the investigations and experiences of the authors as philosophy teachers, sometimes focusing on high school practices, sometimes emphasizing Philosophy teaching and teacher's education at the university, mainly from the context of Sao Paulo State.