Religious Education in the Brazilian Common National Curriculum Base

What is the place of religions of African origins?

Abstract

Religious education is the only school subject in the 1988 Federal Constitution. Due to Christian influence, this curricular component has been present in all Brazilian Constitutions since 1934, and its regulation in the Law of guidelines and bases of Education, less than a decade after the 1988 Constitution, has undergone important changes. In 2010, the National Education Council defined Religious Education as one of the five areas of knowledge in Fundamental Education and, in 2018, the Ministry of Education published the Common Curricular Base document, repealed by movements of representative groups of education professionals. The article analyzes the Religious Education area of this document, verifying whether the concept of religion adopted and the description of thematic units, objects of knowledge and skills include religions of African origins. It concludes that the conception of religion present in the  Common Curricular Base document, as well as the disrespect for Law 10.639/2003, make Religious Education unreceptive to religions of African origins and inadequate to combat religious racism.