A cegueira botânica no contexto universitário: uma investigação cognitiva

Abstract

Plant organisms serve as the basis for most natural trophic chains, therefore, essential for life on earth, regulating and sustaining it, through its various functions and utilities, however, even in the face of this, they go through the zoocentric gaze of society, that makes them inferior. Even in basic education, responsible for the introduction of botanical knowledge and the development of interest in these, they suffer from a lack of stimulation and motivation, consequences of a neglected training on the part of teachers, teaching materials that are not adequate for contextualization and the lack of preparation and experience allowed through immersive practices, as well as in favor of technological advancement, which distances reality closer to nature. In this way, the concept of plant blindness emerges as a way to highlight the behavioral evolutionary path of the human being, to the detriment of their choices that lead to the maintenance of this ignorant cycle, to focus more on animals, pointing to cognition as a main factor in this. Therefore, the present work, using as a reference the area of ​​ethnobotany, responsible for the study of the relationships between human beings and plants, aimed to identify in university students this plant blindness and, in the sequence, to verify if the academic courses areas that these are part, their sex and the period of residence of these in rural areas have an influence on the issue. To do so, a photo-stimulus notebook was used, with selected images, containing zoological and botanical species so that the university students, through a cognitive test, could identify their presence and classify them, or not, and after collecting datas, each of the responses was analyzed in order to categorize them into three groups, according to the expression of botanical blindness, “Mild blindness”, “Elevated blindness” and “Diverse”. After recruitment of 865 participants, who responded to the form, anonymously and online, the data were processed, by descriptive statistics and correspondence and chi-square analysis, and indicated that a percentage of 58% among them, presented what we call “elevated blindness”. In addition, an effect of the participants' course area on the expression of botanical blindness was observed but, different from what we expected, we did not observe effects of sex or place of residence on it. In addition to the results, we recommend actions so that people start to perceive plants as active organisms.