OVERCOMING THE LIMITS FOR A MEANINGFUL GEOGRAPHICAL EDUCATION

This is an article analyzing the didactic action and the involvement of geography teachers with their actions in the classroom. This article is the result of analysis of research, financed by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa (FAPESP), and took place in a public school in the State of São Paulo. The central objective was to analyze knowledge and teaching practices in geography. The discussions presented here are focused on teaching practices – the classroom didactic – aimed at altering the logic of the organization of the school curriculum for Geography in Fundamental Teaching (5th to 9th. years). It also dels with analyzing the teaching and learning of geography, considered most important to the extent that geographic knowledge permits understanding of places and human actions, thereby overcoming a paradigm common in Geography in various countries, of its being a discipline to stimulate learning by rote and description with no relevance to the school curriculum.