The work with literary texts plays an important role in the process of formation of critical and reflective subjects. However, it is perceived that these literatures do not find adequate space in the classrooms of elementary school in the aforementioned school and this is a problem, although it is not seen as such by a small part of the teachers of that institution.
On the other hand, some of the teachers interviewed believe that literature is a didactic resource of great application and value in the teaching-learning process, besides being an important motivator to form future critical-reflexive readers. The central idea of this article is to present the result of research and subsequent reflection on the work with children’s literature.
Abstract
Working with literary texts plays an important role in the formation of critical and reflective subjects. However, it is perceived that these literatures do not find adequate space in the classrooms of elementary school in the aforementioned school and that’s a problem, although it is not seen as such by a small number of teachers that institution.
On the other hand, some of the teachers interviewed believe that literature is rather a teaching resource of great value and application in the teaching-learning process as well as an important motivator to train future critical-reflective readers. The central idea of this paper is to present the results of research and later and further reflection on the work with the children’s literature.
Introduction
It is not difficult to realize that children’s literature does not have the adequate space in the classrooms of elementary school classes of most Brazilian public schools and this lack of space for literature is, most of the time, justified by the language teachers, due to the failure of the curricular grid, which does not contemplate a broader work with literature.
One of the consequences of this is the lack of opportunity for students to have a pleasant and continuous contact with the magical and fictional world proper to literary narratives.
Awakening the students’ appreciation of literary texts outside the school environment becomes more feasible if this contact occurs properly at school, since the handling of these texts takes place within a context of organized learning and aesthetic appreciation. For this, the will and effort of the teacher are essential, since it is necessary to positively modify the vision and the value that the school community of most schools has in relation to activities related to literature.
Even when conclusive studies highlight the relevance that literature has in the formation of people’s identity, favoring even more efficient, sensitive and critical readers of the reality to which they are inserted, many teachers and schools continue relegating activities with literature to the more secondary, sporadic and superficial plans of the work in their classrooms.
The school is responsible, among other things, for making its students readers efficient and not just mere decoders of the language, because “reading is a process of perception of reality that involves, among other factors, the vision of the world of the reader”,
School is undoubtedly a space where children and young people spend most of their time, so it is natural that in it, not only the contact with children’s literature, but that this happens in a prestigious way.
Thus, the school needs a policy of incentive and promotion of reading that, before anything, takes into consideration the mediators, because these, acting together with other institutional instances, should act as the main bridge for the transmission of literary texts to the students.
When the student realizes that there is an environment of freedom and respect in that workplace [in the classroom] he can perceive the literary text as a cultural product with which he interacts significantly. The formation of a working environment that enables students to intervene in class and in the literary text itself is the teacher’s responsibility.
Theoretical background
It is a consensus among many scholars that children’s and children’s literature have a relevant role in the intellectual development of children and young people, but this has not always been seriously considered.
Before the 18th century, children’s literature was restricted to a few. Only children from the higher classes could have access to the classics of literature, and children from the lower classes had contact with a more rudimentary literature, of oral tradition, spread by the elders and did not distinguish the adult universe from the infantile one, since children were seen not as children, but as small individuals.
The history of children’s literature has relatively few chapters. It begins to delineate itself in the early eighteenth century, when the child by what should be considered a different being from the adult, with its own needs and characteristics, so it should distance itself from the life of the elders and receive a special education that would prepare it for adult life.
It is worth remembering that, in that period, children belonging to the popular classes did not even have the right to read and write.
The phases of human life that comprise childhood and adolescence are the most important and significant stages of human development. Cognitive development is classified into four stages and proves that human beings go through a series of predictable and ordered changes, that is, in general, all individuals experience all stages in the same sequence.
Today, adolescence is a phase of human development that bridges childhood and adulthood. In this perspective of connection, adolescence is understood as a period crossed by crises, which guide the young in the construction of his subjectivity. However, adolescence cannot be understood only as a phase of transition.
According to the literature, there is a growing concern during the development of adolescence, due to the rapid changes that have occurred in the world and how one observes the behavior of these young people before society, i.e., the ability of the context to influence the decision making of the individual. It is in this phase that decisions to act in adult life are made.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
To broaden the knowledge about children’s literature in elementary school, its nature, its process and its consequence for the lives of children and adolescents, is fundamental to all teachers who wish to offer quality teaching.
It is known that reading is one of the pillars of school education, and it is in the school environment that reading and writing practices are formally systematized. In this way, “the school can collaborate in the formation of the reader, and their collaboration will be greater or lesser in dependence on the assumptions that underlie their curriculum.
Unfortunately, however, many elementary school teachers continue to ignore the need to make literary reading in school something pleasant, capable of motivating the student’s desire to have greater contact with reading practice beyond the school environment. This is still the case because many of these teachers do not have adequate training in language teaching that would allow them to create another conception about working with reading.