The Great Adventure for Gender (Equality/Inequality) the Images of the Feminine and the Masculine Transmitted by the Portuguese Manual of the 4th Year of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education (2014-2015)

(High School of Education Paula Frassinetti/Sociology Institute Porto University, Porto, Portugal)

Abstract: School textbooks are privileged vehicles to (re)transmit information for children’s learning in the classroom. In this space values and knowledge are conveyed and inform the culture and the daily life of children, being the Portuguese language manual of the 4th year of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education that assumes a structuring functions in the process of learning and socialization. The classroom constitutes a central space in the life of the child and in it the re-contextualization of the official pedagogical discourse, formalized by a curriculum regulated in the ambit of which the respective manuals appear. Formal education takes place in a “social world” where there is a reproduction of values, social order and gender inequality. Gender equality is one of the main concerns of modern and democratic societies, and the School, as a historical institution of socialization, assumes an important function of social regulation. Thus, the School is responsible for teaching in accordance with its own values and norms and resulting from a process of enhancing democracy and the consolidation of Human and Social Rights. The confrontation between the analysis of the texts of the Portuguese Language Textbook of the 4th year of schooling and the normative guidelines of the regulators of the social question of Gender Equality opens the way to another look at the social function that the Portuguese Language Textbook (PLT) can play in this question.

Key words: gender inequality, Portuguese language textbook, school