Young high school students and the generation of historical sense. Case study: a Várzea Grande school and narration of the comics alluding to the encounter between indigenous and European people during the conquest of America

Abstract

Through a qualitative research experience based in the Grounded Theory I investigate how young students of public high school (between 16 and 18 years old) of the city of Várzea Grande, Mato Grosso, Brazil, generate sense of temporal orientation from the confrontation between two comics with historical issues. This, with the concern to understand how these young students mobilize metahistorical ideas about the historical processes linked to the relationship between interculturality and the new humanism (see footnote 1). For this, I have produced a research tool based on methodological criteria of qualitative research (see footnote 2) where I investigate the historical ideas of young students of a high school through the confrontation of two comics about conflicts between Europeans and Indigenous during the conquest of America, which took place around 1492 and 1550. The first historical graphic narrative, A version, called Conquista e colonização da América [Conquest and the colonization of America] is a chapter of the textbook organized as historical comic book História Geral: História para a escola moderna [General History: History for modern school] (see footnote 3)written by the Brazilian historian Julierme de Abreu e Castro and drawn by the Argentine cartoonist Rodolfo Zalla. The second historical graphic narrative presented in the research instrument, the B version, called Colombo (see footnote 4), written and drawn by the Italian cartoonist Francesco Tulio Altan. In conclusion, I could see that these young students mobilize some of the dimensions of these artifacts of historical culture that create the possibility of the apprehension of historical knowledge elaborated in an intersubjective and humanistic way.