CRITICAL SOCIAL THEORY AND HISTORICAL-CRITICAL PEDAGOGY: contributions to environmental education

Abstract

This paper discusses the contribution of dialectical-historical materialism to the environmental debate, seeking foundations for environmental education in historical-critical pedagogy. As a socialist pedagogy stemming from Marxian thought and the struggles for public education and in defense of education workers, some of its statements and proposals are paramount to the materialization of environmental education practices and public policies, especially in the school context. For that purpose, the first section reviews some foundations of a critical epistemology and of the ontology of social being in dialectical-historical materialism's terms, thus situating historical-critical pedagogy's reasoning. The following section problematizes education as a process of human formation and the search for overcoming social relations of domination to discuss the social and historical significance of curricula for school education, including the environmental one. It finally claims such significance to be historical-critical pedagogy's largest contribution to critical environmental education, which has Marxian thought as its theoretical and methodological basis.