Crianças e livros: a literatura a serviço da educação

Abstract

This research focuses on the interdependent relationship between children's literature and the school institution, as well as its consequences in terms of literary quality. In this way, the formulation of childhood's concept by Rousseau and the context of modernization that made possible the emergence of this literary category are resumed, explaining the pedagogical objectives that dictated the directions of this production since its beginnig. It is also noteworthy that the educational renewal at that time was based on the bourgeois ideology, which had as one of the intentions the social conditioning corresponding to its values. As a result, children's books establish themselves as a pedagogical tool for the formation of the reader-child-student, so that their literary quality also depends on their utilitarian function. In the Brazilian context, Cecília Meireles stands out as a pioneer by publishing the book Problemas da Literatura Infantil (1951) — object of study that guided this work —, in which she reinforces the important role of the school and reading mediators, humanist precepts and the traditional view when debating the aesthetic quality of books presented to children. As a counterpoint to this thought, criticisms to the pedagogical criteria for thinking about literature, developed since the second half of the twentieth century, are brought represented here, mainly, by the voices of Ana Maria Machado, Regina Zilberman, Marisa Lajolo, Ligia Cademartori, Edmir Perrotti, Peter Hunt and María Teresa Andruetto — who adopt a more rigorously literary perspective. When approaching theory and literary criticism to children's literature, it is possible to perceive a certain resistance on pedagogy’s behalf to abandon traditional criteria, and, on the other hand, resistance from the literary academy to legitimize the category, so that productions for children are still hostages of what Luiz Costa Lima (2007) called the imaginary control. Therefore, it is understood that this approach is increasingly necessary to achieve the emancipation of children's literature in relation to educational objectives, resulting in the formation of critical readers, capable of questioning and subverting the social conditioning attributed to them, albeit indirectly, through books.