Educators criticize the use of digital textbooks only in SP – 08/01/2023 – Educação

Educators heard by Sheet criticized the decision of the Tarcísio de Freitas administration (Republicans) to start offering only digital textbooks, and no longer printed ones, for students from the 6th year of fundamental.

The Secretary of Education of the State of São Paulo is also being challenged for giving up participating in the National Textbook Program (PNLD), in which textbooks are purchased with funds from the National Fund for the Development of Education, of the Ministry of Education. As of 2024, didactic material produced by the government of São Paulo will be used in schools.

“It’s regrettable”, said educator Theresa Adrião, researcher and professor at Unicamp and UFBA (Federal University of Bahia). “Although the PNLD has suffered from the interference and mistakes of the previous MEC management, the logic of the program, which delegates to teachers the choice of teaching material that best fits the pedagogical project of each school, has been an important strategy”, stated. “The PNLD places the school at the center of the decision-making process.”

Regarding the option to use only digital textbooks, the educator stated that it goes “against what research has indicated”.

“Access to digital resources is unequally distributed across territories. It is unnecessary to remember all the difficulty experienced by populations in the peripheries to access the internet”, he said. “In addition, the subordination of pedagogical processes to digital platforms depersonalizes the necessary relationship between teachers and students”, said Adrião, who is a researcher of educational policies and coordinator of the Latin American Network of Researchers in Privatization of Education.

All the specialists contacted by the report mentioned negative repercussions of the measure.

“I am very worried and hoping that the secretary [Renato Feder] review that decision. Today I should talk to him about it”, said Cláudia Costin, president of the Singularidades Institute, which trains educators, and director of the Center for Educational Policies at FGV.

“There is concern about how students who don’t have computers will study at home, but also that the printed book is essential for greater retention of learning,” said Costin, who is also founder and director of the Center for Excellence and Innovation in Education Policy and Visiting Professor at the Harvard School of Education.

Costin wrote the preface to a book recently released by Renato Feder, “Educação para o Futuro” (Editora Gente), in which he discusses his work as secretary of Education in Paraná.

“He had merits in this administration, such as the recovery of learning from the pandemic, but he did not end up with the book printed in Paraná”, said Costin.

Apeoesp, the São Paulo teachers’ union, said it will ask the Public Ministry to investigate the decision of the São Paulo government.

It also plans to ask the secretary for clarification on non-adherence to the PNLD, in addition to requesting information from the MEC on the amount of resources that the Government of São Paulo is giving up.

Abrelivros (Brazilian Association of Books and Educational Content) told the Sheet that, just considering fundamental 2, the loss of resources is R$ 120 million. If São Paulo does not also adhere to the PNLD for secondary education, as it has already stated it will do, the budget will exceed R$ 200 million.

“The federal government offers funds for the textbook. These books are carefully chosen by specialized people. But the government of São Paulo tears up the possibility of doing this articulation”, he said to Sheet Deputy Professor Bebel (PT), president of the Education Commission of the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo and vice-president of Apeoesp.

“Let’s open a wide debate about this [na Assembleia] and take action,” he said. For her, “there is an ideological question behind the measure. “The secretary puts this little digital booklet, the teachers have to print and teach with this material of terrible quality, made by who knows who, with the ideological line of the Secretary of Education, contaminated by the conception of the government that is there.”

On Monday (31), the government stated that “Education in SP has its own didactic material aligned with the state curriculum and used in the 5,300 schools, maintaining pedagogical coherence”.

“All the pedagogical actions launched by the folder are defined based on the material itself. An example is the Provão Paulista, which will be used as a means of admission in 2024 to public universities in the State, such as USP and Unicamp.”