Religious Education : space of catechisms

Abstract

This article is the result of a qualitative historical documentary research on the construction of the discipline of Religious Education from textbooks. One of the strategies to understand the formation of the curriculum components in the school, being an institution of modernity that is closely related to the bourgeois urban-industrial society project, refers to the reflection of how their characters are built. The school has played the role of form and shape individual and collective standards of rationalization and bureaucratization of society. Although other social institutions carry out the same task, it is the school’s role to convey legitimated knowledge, essential requirement to meet the social demands. The curriculum components collaborate in such mediation.  Through Religious Education, among others, such  curriculum components is really perceived, especially embodied by textbooks, which through their texts and exercises express knowledge to be transmitted . We understand that through textbooks is possible to verify the development of this discipline, especially in its origin when it was called religion class, and wished to consolidate the project of the hegemonic religion through their catechisms as a teaching tool for countless generations.