SCIENCE EDUCATION AS STATE CONTROL: THE CASE OF NAZI GERMANY

ABSTRACT:

In this article, we have identified some of the main educational changes promoted by the German government before World War II. Such changes aimed to change the existing culture in the country, establishing a unified worldview based on Nazi principles that were declared even before the National Socialist Party came to power. The research conducted is qualitative, of a historical nature, in which we seek to rescue, with the support of the Bakhtinian linguistic methodology, the typical enunciative forms expressed in educational materials from the pre-war period. As a result, we recognize that the science education was transformed into an education for war. The scientific contents were contextualized in situations of war and anti-Semitic ideals. Curricular modifications increased the burden of physical conditioning disciplines and the separation between men and women’s curricula. As evidence, we present examples of how the political sphere determined ways of thinking about science and its teaching, through questions and didactic exercises introduced in didactic materials.

Keywords:
Curriculum; Science teaching; Nazism; Educational control; Bakhtin