A Matemática da escola primária brasileira: tradição e modernização

Abstract

With the objective of understanding the impact of the introduction of Modern Mathematics on the Brazilian primary school, the present study analyses the ruptures and the continuities suffered by a discipline marked by a strong pedagogic tradition. Having gone through various education reforms, Brazilian primary school mathematics was characterized, in the 1960s, at the time of dissemination of the Movement of Modern Mathematics, as a curricular component which oscillated between a mental discipline and practical preparation for real life.

To understand how this double purpose of arithmetic in the primary school was impacted by the arrival of this movement, this study analyses historical sources as a school notebook from 1942, as well as the Mathematics Exams from the Gymnasium Admission tests, of the State School of São Paulo, from the decades 1940 to 1970, moments that preceded and marked the practices of the Modern Mathematics on Brazilians schools. The study states that the Modern Mathematics Movement, besides proposing new objectives for school mathematics and the emphasis of moving beyond memorization and repetition, did not initially make a substantial rupture in traditional arithmetic of elementary school.