Organized by Unicamp, the National Olympiad in Brazilian History will have its winners announced this weekend
While this text was being written, a team made up of three students and a History teacher from the city of Coari, in Amazonas, six hours away by boat from the capital Manaus, was packing their bags to travel to Campinas, where they will participate this weekend ( 19 and 20) of the final activities of the National Olympiad in Brazilian History (ONHB), organized by the History Department of the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at Unicamp. Here, people from Coari will join 306 other teams from all over Brazil to close the ninth edition of the event, one of the University's most important extension actions.
ONHB was born in 2009, already as a major event. The first edition had 15 thousand subscribers. Since then, it has only grown. The current version registered 42 thousand participants, who were divided into 12 thousand teams made up of a History teacher and three students from the 8th and 9th years of elementary and high school, both from public and private schools. Among these teams, 307 (around 1,2 people) were called up to participate in the final of the competition. Ceará is the State with the highest number of finalists (119 teams), followed by Rio Grande do Norte (60 teams), São Paulo (37 teams) and Bahia (24 teams).
To reach this in-person stage of the Olympics, the “athletes” completed another five phases in which they had to undergo tests formulated online, lasting one week each. They solved multiple choice questions and carried out tasks based on debates, research in books and on the internet and guidance from the teacher, who is responsible for leading the team. “This procedure is important because it encourages group work and contributes to the development of critical analysis in these students”, considers the ONHB coordinator, professor Cristina Meneguello, whose associate coordinator is professor Alessandra Pedro.
According to Cristina, the final test will be held on Saturday morning, in the Basic Cycle II classrooms, without the presence of the captain teacher. The result will be announced on Sunday morning, in a ceremony that will take place at the Unicamp Multidisciplinary Gymnasium (GMU). “The closing ceremony is always very emotional. There is a fraternization between people from different places, backgrounds and cultures, but who have a love for History in common”, defines the teacher.
In total, 15 gold, 25 silver and 35 bronze medals will be awarded, depending on the score. The other participants will also receive medals of honor for merit. “This award is the way we found to highlight the importance of the Olympics more as a tool for learning and teaching History than as a competition”, explains the event coordinator. The nine editions of the ONHB, continues Cristina, provided very impressive results.
One of them is the fact that several participants from previous editions graduated in History and are now leading new teams of students. “In addition, we have a database made up of tests and work carried out by the teams, which constitute rich material for research. In fact, some master's dissertations and course completion work have already been carried out on the Olympics, in different universities in the country”, informs the professor.
The ONHB coordinator highlights the need to value History teaching, especially at the current time. Cristina remembers that we live in a phase in which what she calls the “propagation of ignorance” occurs, amplified by the use of social networks. “People argue based on fallacies, information that is not based on history or research, but rather on guesswork. It turns out that young people can become easy prey to the internet and groups that seem to give them some sense of belonging. This is why we need to study History; so as not to fall into this type of trap”, she ponders.
Another reason to value the teaching of History these days, continues Cristina, comes from the fact that the Temer government has changed, via provisional measure, without discussion with society, the Law on Education Guidelines and Bases. The changes, she states, represent an attack on federal institutes, as they establish that their teachers do not need to be trained. Furthermore, the MP leaves it to the Secondary Education Curricular Base, which has not yet met, the decision to transform History, Geography and Chemistry, for example, into content, removing the character of subjects from them. “As a result, a Literature teacher, hypothetically, can cover something about History in one of his classes and consider that the content has been fulfilled”, she warns.
If History stops being a discipline, the ONHB coordinator fears, this could favor the return of disciplines such as Moral and Civic Education and Studies of Brazilian Problems, which served the purposes of dictatorial governments. “It would be an affront to study without learning the history of your own country”, understands Cristina. According to her, after the closure of the ONHB, 32 teachers from the teams with the highest scores will remain in Campinas for another week, during which they will participate in a training course, consisting of classes, lectures and technical visits to museums and archives. The event is supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and the Postgraduate Program in History at Unicamp.
