Portuguese Literature and Teaching

In recent years, the teaching of Portuguese has been at the centre of intense public debate. Among the different controversies we have witnessed is the one that has arisen around the role of teaching literature in Portuguese language teaching, and the realisation that literary content is decreasing in Portuguese curricula in favour of other types of text, and that even those that remain are aesthetically neutralised, sometimes being studied as if they were non-literary texts.

Those who protest against this reduction and those who defend it even invoke the same argument: that it is necessary to defend an inclusive school that assures the same opportunities for everybody. For some, the presence of literature in programmes is a factor of discrimination. To that extent, persisting in studying it would mean keeping more students away from the educational success to which they are entitled. Using the same argumentative basis, there are those who think exactly the opposite. For them, literature (and, of course, the central books of the canon) is one of the highest achievements of the human spirit and should be considered everyone's heritage. In this sense, their presence in democratic schools is part of the framework of social equity.

Through this study, Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos seeks to identify the deserved importance of literature in the teaching of Portuguese, as well as the methods and objectives that should be associated with it, in order for this teaching to be of quality and successful. To this end, the authors address issues such as:

• the roots of the crisis in the teaching of literature in schools
• the need to achieve a "new legitimacy" for the teaching of literature, in order to be able to «rehabilitate» it
• the characteristics of a "new literary culture" that gives Literature the importance it deserves in the teaching of Portuguese.