Ensinando o futuro: visões da ficção científica sobre o ato de lecionar

Abstract

This research presents a theoretical-analytical approach to the question of representation of teaching in science fiction texts of American authors of the 20th century: Isaac Asimov, author of The fun they had! (1951); Lloyd Biggle Jr, who wrote And madly teach at 1966 and Connie Willis, whose analyzed narrative is called Ado and dates back to 1990. Discuss the relationships potentially liable to be established between the imaginary depicted in these works and the contemporary neoliberal vision of the act of teaching as the object of automation and strict standardization can certify the fact that such idealized representations have become, to a large extent, paradigms from the practices of advanced capitalism (which have as their primary model the American nation) capable of influencing how relationships between teachers and technologies in our country are understood, represented and planned. Therefore, as a primary objective, we attempt to understand how the discursive construction of the representation of the education worker (and the imaginary technologies surrounding this representation) is carried out, inserting it into the cultural dimensions of the North American imaginary in order to discuss its contemporary reflections and its deterministic content. In order to do this, we methodologically used the review and bibliographical analysis of scientific articles and national and foreign literary texts (which included, but were not limited to, works designated as objects), and, among the conclusions drawn, we pointed out that the relationship of the corpus with the cultural industry does not allow a radical departure from traditionalist educational theories familiar to the readers who constitute the target audience of the authors, in addition to highlighting perspectives marked by determinism in the texts, although in some cases, it is just insinuated or emerged in contrast to subsequent productions of the writer. As a final point, however, it is possible to see the ultimate content of the texts of the corpus as having a humanistic priority: Asimov portrays the desire for a communal education in place of the isolation of the student in the name of efficiency; Biggle Jr. discusses, in a subtle way, the devaluation of the teacher's figure before a technique focused at the maximization of economic results and, finally, Willis points out the possibilities and dangers of trying to ban all the ideology of the school environment, following a supposedly democratic mold that ends up serving the annihilation of the possibilities of learning.