Statistical knowledge in the school curriculum: studying ways of government

This paper approaches the statistical knowledge and its insertion in the school curriculum, by considering its interface with the fields of History, Epistemology and teaching of Statistics. The concept of numeramentality is used from an analytical perspective to study normativities based on quantification, measurement, use and record of numbers, which have guided ways of thinking and acting in contemporaneity. The methodology consists of a historical, genealogically oriented approach founded on Michel Foucault’s work, and a pragmatic understanding of language and practices as proposed by Wittgenstein. Risk is analyzed as an element that currently acts in the government of populations and individuals by becoming a curriculum component. The study also highlights the way through which the Brazilian school curriculum has produced socially desirable ways of thinking and acting in accordance with the governmental order.