Teaching history and public history: Historical knowledge and its social function

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the relationship between historical learning and its public function in society. Starting from the premise that there is a clash between different historical cultures existing in contemporary Brazilian society, the text discusses the importance that historical science and its cognitive repertoire have for the formation of historical thought, whether in the academic sphere or in the context of basic education, because it provides important knowledge tools so that teachers and students can reflect, autonomously, about their own history and the history of the society in which they are inserted. In this sense, the challenge of teaching history is to continue to provide (and deepen) the scientific means to enable students to (re) know these different narratives, through the diversity of appropriate cultural production as a historical source, with a view to the construction and development of historical thought, as well as of its public function of strengthening democracy, citizenship, critical autonomy, respect and acceptance of otherness, and finally, the full humanization of society.