O Silêncio das Origens
A Ausência da Arte Pré-Histórica nas Aprendizagens Essenciais de História da Cultura e das Artes
Keywords:
History of Culture and the Arts; Curriculum; Historical consciousness; Prehistoric art; Artistic narratives; Aesthetic education.Abstract
This study examines the absence of prehistoric art in the Essential Learnings (Aprendizagens Essenciais) of the History of Culture and the Arts (HCA) curriculum for Secondary Education in Portugal and discusses the implications of this omission for students’ aesthetic and historical formation. The current curricular structure, which introduces artistic production through contemporary creativity and rupture before moving directly to Classical Antiquity, constructs a narrative in which the Western canon is implicitly positioned as the origin of art. Such a configuration obscures the role of prehistoric art as the inaugural gesture of symbolic expression and as the foundational condition of aesthetic experience. A model for reintegration is proposed, grounded in the existing didactic structure of HCA manuals, in other words, contextualized documents, scientific mediation biographies, heritage-related historical events, and visual analysis of works. This reintegration restores the epistemological status of prehistoric art as the origin of visual expression and supports the development of a historically informed, critical, and inclusive aesthetic awareness.
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