The discipline of philosophy in Basic Education and its formative characteristics: a problematization in the light of Ancient Philosophy

Abstract

The purpose of this text is to problematize the limits of philosophy in Basic Education, since, in our analysis, teaching philosophy nowadays provides students with a very impoverished educational background. In fact, what happens in classroom is an educational background that is restricted to the order of comprehension, assimilation and repetition of philosophical discourses. On the one hand, teaching comprises the movement of transmitting representations that the teacher has of a certain fragment in the history of philosophy. On the other hand, learning would be reproducing what has been transmitted, by applying philosophical knowledge as formulas to think about certain issues. From this school context, we begin to problematize the effectiveness of transmission in the construction of a minimally philosophical formation, because it is questioned whether it is the discursive appropriation that would base this formative process. It is hypothesized that it is not the possession of discourses that would guarantee a formation in philosophy and that this way of forming does not find resonance in the own philosophical tradition. For this, the initial movements of the ancient philosophy are recovered, mainly with the figure of Socrates and the texts of Plato.