Teaching Physics in the Society of the Spectacle: an analysis of the implementation and content in curriculum proposals

Abstract

This  study  presents  an  analysis  of  the  implementation  and  Physics educational content from two new “curriculum proposals” for High School, that were adopted by the Public School System in the state of São Paulo from 2007 to 2010. On the part of the State Government of São Paulo the curricular proposal São Paulo Faz Escola was designed, while the Federal Government distributed Physics textbooks from PNLEM 2007.  The  analysis  is  developed  from  the  perspective  of  the  French sociological theorist Guy Debord, based on the concept of “Society of the Spectacle”, and from the perspective of the Brazilian political-pedagogical educator Paulo Freire. This paper points out the main ideas and  results  emerged  from  the  master's  thesis  defended in 2011 by the author. This research concludes that part of the implementation and part of  the  physics  educational  content  in  these  new curriculum proposals follow  the  logic  of  the  Spectacle, in which content and actions are publicized as dialogical, although they are implemented authoritatively.