Abstract

History textbooks in Chile are characterized by exposing an adult-centered historical narrative that invisibilizes the participation of boys and girls, since they have traditionally focused on describing the political exploits carried out by elite adult men in national and western history. To evidence this problem, in this qualitative, exploratory and interpretive research, critical literacy is used to analyze the texts and images of four textbooks published between 2016 and 2019 by SM and Santillana publishers. From these manuals, thematic units related to Ancient Rome and Greece, colonial Chile, and European history of the 19th and 20th centuries were selected because they have the most relevant evidence to examine the subject. It is concluded that the analyzed discourses show that infants are marginalized social actors in history or are represented from the adult-centered paradigm as dependent and subordinate subjects to the adult world. Faced with this scenario, the importance of prioritizing children’s perspectives in the study of history and in the problematization of historical contents taught in the classroom is emphasized.