The present work is historiographical and intends to contribute to the debate on
policies related to textbooks, especially in the philosophical field, as it analyzes the trajectory
of school textbooks for the Teaching of Philosophy in Brazil. Based on social, economic and
educational policies, it was possible to map the path that the manual for the discipline of
Philosophy took, from the time of Jesuit education to the current textbook evaluation programs.
The historiography of manuals and textbooks for the Teaching of Philosophy in Brazil from
1500 to 1930 was discussed, a phase in which they were the privileged supports for teaching.
The debate went through the process of institutionalizing the choice of textbooks and the
evaluation of school textbooks, including the period of creation of the National Textbook
Commission (CNLD) and the Technical Book and Textbook Commission (COLTED), until
reaching the current context, marked by the National Textbook Program (PNLD), in which it
appears that school textbooks are now examined as merchandise, as another product of the
cultural industry and as a profitable item. The textbook, since the beginning of the schooling
process in Brazil, has always been part of the school culture and its form and content, over the
years, began to be controlled via governmental assessment bodies. Currently, the Philosophy
discipline has several teaching manuals available, which have been improved over time, mainly
due to the inclusion of the discipline in school curricula. As a commodity, the printed textbook
has been distributed in schools to students, often as the only source of reading to which they
have access. We show that initiatives such as the Folhas Project, developed by the Education
Department of the State of Paraná, in which the teachers themselves prepared the textbooks in
a collaborative way, had a production value, per unit, much lower than that offered by the
publishers. It is a textbook produced with Open Educational Resources (OER), making the book
public and ready to be distributed free of charge at a specific web address, with authorization
for partial or total reproduction of the work. We did a price survey and compared. From an
economic point of view, the initiative proved to be a real advance, whose example should be
followed by other states of the federation. Given the realization that OERs are an important
alternative to the current textbook policy, as a product of this dissertation, the recommendation is:
education is not a commodity and the Philosophy textbook should not be either.
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