Education for ethnic-racial relations in Brazilian physical education: reflections on schooling and silencing

This study's objective is to present some reflections on Education for Ethnic-Racial Relations (ERER, acronym in Portuguese) and its link with Physical Education in Brazil, considering that Brazilian Physical Education has been greatly influenced by curriculum from both Europe and the United States during most of the twentieth century. To this end, we have used bibliographic research as a tool. Physical Education, as a curricular component of Brazilian basic education, was linked to the interests of medical and military institutions that defined its space and area of knowledge for a prolonged period. In this context, its actions envisioned forming and maintaining disciplined, strong and healthy bodies, created on precepts like, for example, eugenics. In this type of intervention, Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous manifestations became invisible and were marginalized and oppressed in favor of reproducing Eurocentric models of corporal expression. In light of this, we argue in support of a Physical Education curriculum based on knowledge originating in the different cultural matrixes of the peoples making up Brazil's populace, above all those who historically have been silenced and who have played a role in shaping our identity.