“The demand that Auschwitz not be repeated is the first of all for education”, as philosopher Theodor W. Adorno wrote in a 1967 text. The warning may seem extemporaneous or pamphleteering given a different context than the horror of the camps of concentration during Nazism. Adorno, just over two decades after the end of the Second World War, was concerned about the effects of oblivion in the face of an image that was beginning to fade in European societies. Half a century after Adorno and more than 70 after the fall of Nazism, the world lives with a memory that condemns those past processes and, at the same time, seems to have a practice of producing invisibility in the face of new misfortunes that affect refugees, minorities and specific ethnic groups.
In Brazil, the political and ideological intensification of recent times has given rise to dark voices that deny basic principles such as human rights. Reactionary groups see the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, published by the UN in 1948, as part of political propaganda and argue that torture and censorship, for example, are acceptable in certain circumstances. Hatred, fury and, above all, indifference make us live in degrading situations that affect human dignity.
Human rights and fundamental freedoms are increasingly trivialized in supposedly aseptic and impartial speeches that some groups defend in the media and in schools. Thought is never neutral. The embarrassment suffered by educators in the face of threats from angry fathers and mothers, political, media and religious leaders that abound across the country is disheartening.
Projects like “school without parties” are nothing more than a decoy against a democratic and plural school. Authoritarian thinking, let us not forget, never presents itself as such. It emerges as a saving speech in the face of supposed mistakes that offend “tradition” and “customs”. But the tradition and customs they defend are certainly not those of all peoples or all groups, but only those of the majority and exclusionary groups. If the appeal to all traditions were valid, we wouldn't have so many murders of indigenous people who fight, for example, for the demarcation of their lands and the possibility of living according to their customs.
Human rights against a logic of violence
Human rights are an achievement and a historic task to stop all types of oppression that affect human dignity. Due to universal premises and, more recently, due to particularistic demands, there is the realization that basic rights are not a gift, but a point in dispute. Refusal to violent means of imposing powers and constraints on people is one of the principles of human rights.
Violence in different forms - public, state, private, open, symbolic, covert - and resistance to them drive debates about limits to people's actions. One of the responses to violence is the open path for dialogue and coexistence between different individuals and groups. Where dialogue cannot prosper, space is created for fear, intransigence and aggression.
School communities, before any scientific knowledge, are committed to training that builds dialogue. Such construction is not the denial of tensions and inequalities. Social, cultural and educational changes occur amid disputes of different orders and other identity configurations. Any agenda for education for democracy and citizenship that does not recognize the full right to coexist with differences is unthinkable. In times when truisms need to be repeated: coexistence between different people does not mean condescension or coexistence with criminal speeches and practices that could be hidden under the cloak of “freedom of opinion”.
If Adorno's appeal made and makes any sense, we must ask ourselves what are the wounds that do not heal and what threatens us today, such as misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia and all types of violence. A country that has as an indisputable mark of its formation the experience of slavery, the decimation of indigenous groups, the persecution of political opponents in dictatorial cycles, the non-recognition of female protagonism and a true continuous genocide against populations on the outskirts still has a lot to do. learn and discover yourself on the human rights agenda.
Schools and the people who work in them cannot fail in their task of proposing debate, discussing practices, problematizing and defending the promotion and guarantee of human rights. Education must stimulate bonds of commitment with present humanity and with that which will come in the future. Thought is action and, therefore, criticism of prejudices, insults, inequalities, as well as the defense of egalitarian principles and respect for differences must be practices that do not accept intimidation and restriction of rights. The current resistance to the human rights agenda reveals where we are in these dark times.
