Respeite nosso Axé: o Imaginário Docente Sobre as Religiões de Matrizes Africanas no Espaço Escolar

Abstract

Within the school space, which should be secular, there are relations of power and domination of religious principles and doctrines that surpass others. Thus, religious doctrines can contribute to the strengthening of prejudices and religious racism, silencing and concealment within the field of Education and the teaching of History. With a view to situations like these, the present research aims to analyze the perception of teachers of a public school about Brazilian religions of African matrices considering Law n. 10,639/2003, which establishes the mandatory teaching of Afro-Brazilian History and Culture in the classroom. It also proposes to address the Imaginary, in understanding the meanings of such religions in the construction of the Brazilian historical and sociocultural identity, in a reflection that focuses on the formation of students of Elementary School in the Final Years. This is an instrumental case study, with a qualitative and exploratory approach, using documental (curricular and school) and bibliographical research procedures, using the General Theory of the Imaginary as a theoretical-methodological framework, symbolic hermeneutics based on the Archetypal Test of 9 Elements (AT-9), and the Comprehensive Interview methodology. In this way, we mapped the imagery projections of the professors, after the application of the AT-9 test and their interpretation through the contributions of the Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary, proposed by Gilbert Durand. Within the five projective tests analyzed, we found two participants who presented a synthetic existential mythical microuniverse of the double diachronic existential universe type: one who presented a heroic mythical microuniverse of the relaxed heroic type; another presented a heroic mythic micro-universe of the impure heroic type; and finally, the last one analyzed, a mystical mystical micro-universe of the impure mystical type. As the support of the Comprehensive Interview and the AT-9 test, we found within the teachers' imaginary, teaching practices and methodologies that they already carried out within their autonomy in the classroom, personal experiences they had with the Afro-Brazilian religious supernatural, and, on the other hand, others also report that, as much as they are “afraid”, they try not to pass this projection on in the classroom during their educational practices and classes taught.