Teaching material from the Tarcísio government continues to have errors – 09/17/2023 – Education

The teaching material of the Tarcísio de Freitas (Republican) government continues to be distributed to schools with conceptual errors, even after the São Paulo Department of Education announced that it would carry out an additional review of the classes.

On September 6th, the department headed by Renato Feder sent a statement to all schools saying that, “in the search to guarantee the quality of the material produced for the 3rd two months” all classes, of all curricular components of the final years elementary school (from 6th to 9th year) and high school would be reviewed.

The announcement occurred two days after the Court determined, in a provisional decision, that classes with errors be removed from the air within 48 hours, under penalty of a daily fine of R$10,000 in case of non-compliance.

The secretariat instructed teachers to download a new version of the material starting last Monday (11), when the additional review would have been completed.

Even in the new version, state school teachers continue to find conceptual errors in the material scheduled to be used in the 3rd semester. In one of them, for example, in the “vision defects” class for 6th grade students, the text talks about the use of a converging lens to correct hyperopia, but the image presented to the students is of a diverging lens.

In another class, in the 8th grade mathematics material, an exercise states that there is an equilateral triangle (all sides with the same measurement) inscribed in a square — which is not possible and is proven by the Pythagorean theorem.

In a note, the Department of Education said that all review procedures of the Pedagogical Coordination (the area responsible for preparing the material) have been intensified to improve the quality of classes and that 30 thousand slides have already been reviewed, which according to the department’s programming should be used in September in schools.

On Friday morning (15), the Sheet accessed the system where the 3rd quarter classes are available to teachers and the material continued to contain errors in the science and mathematics subjects. After the secretariat was questioned about the flaws, the content was changed in the system.

The secretariat reported that the error found in the science material was corrected on August 18, “before being presented in the classroom and before the ongoing review process”. The folder did not explain why the class with an error was accessed in the system by Sheet on Friday morning.

Regarding the error in the mathematics material, the department said that it was a class scheduled to be used between July 27th and August 4th. The review carried out last week prioritized analyzing the content from September, therefore, this class “is currently under review, as is all content prior to September”.

Produced by the secretariat, this material began to be distributed to schools in April this year, to more than 3 million students. The Secretary of Education’s initial idea was to give up the textbooks sent by the MEC (Ministry of Education) so that teachers could only use the content created by his team — he backed away from the decision after strong negative repercussions.

A series of grammatical, conceptual and methodological errors have been pointed out by teachers and experts from different areas. One of the classes, for example, said that the Lei Áurea, of 1888, was signed by Dom Pedro 2º and that the capital of São Paulo has beaches.

After the errors were revealed, the secretariat even dismissed employees, and the coordinator responsible for producing the material resigned from his position.

According to Abrelivros (Brazilian Association of Books and Educational Content), which brings together the main educational publishers in the country, textbooks purchased by MEC take at least two years to be ready. Afterwards, they are still subjected to an external review to identify errors or inconsistencies.

In São Paulo, the teaching material began to be distributed to schools less than three months after production began. The secretariat does not inform who the people involved in the process are or how the contents are reviewed. She only informed that teachers from the school system are involved in the preparation.