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Educator Paulo Freire has his name enshrined in the main building of the Faculty of Education (FE) at Unicamp with a plaque unveiled in a ceremony at 17 pm this Wednesday, 29th, in the unit's Main Hall. The appointment is an initiative of FE Professional Master's students, the vast majority of whom work with culture circles, using Paulo Freire's methods on the floor of public schools. The Patron of Brazilian Education was a professor at the house for 10 years, from 1981 to 1991, at what is now called the Department of Social Sciences in Education (Decise), teaching the subjects of education and social movements.
“This building was inaugurated without a name and the students’ claim is justified because it is the place where Professor Paulo Freire circulated and which still contains his energy”, says Débora Mazza, former student of the educator from Pernambuco and current associate director of FE . “The appointment comes at a time when attacks against public schools are coming from all sides, against students and teachers, against the resources allocated to them. For us, it is very clear that it is a project orchestrated to remove the Brazilian people from the State budget. Public schools are an asset of the people for the construction of a more civilized, educated country with less inequalities.”
Professor Nima Spigolon, coordinator of the Professional Master's Degree, observes that the main building concentrates the “brain” and “heart” of the Faculty of Education and, seen from above, forms a six-pointed star. “It contains the management, coordination, departments, faculty rooms, the congregation room, the main hall, the research secretariat, the events secretariat. This appointment, when the country is experiencing the intensification of a political scenario that targets universities, public education and science and technology in the country, shows how much Paulo Freire is still present, pulsating in our research and relationships. I think that’s how he would like to be remembered.”
Nima Spigolon highlights the institutional process of naming the building, based on a supra-departmental instance: the 1st Research Seminar on Professional Masters in School Education, bringing together teachers, postgraduate students and public schools on November 23, 2018, at FE. “Before that night, a request was made to withdraw the title of 'Patron of Education' granted to Paulo Freire, which led to a motion by the Faculty's research groups. The nomination proposal was drawn up collectively during the seminar and around 800 signatures were collected from teachers, students and staff. The minutes were ratified by the Postgraduate Committee and forwarded to the highest authority of the unit, the Congregation, whose deliberation received a standing ovation, in a historic moment of commotion.”
Ownership questioned
Débora Mazza recalls that Paulo Freire, however, had his status as a full professor questioned by the University Council and that the request for him to be hired at the MS-6 level (top of higher education) took five years to be approved. “Sometimes we think that we are experiencing a neoconservative and neoliberal wave, but looking at Paulo Freire's documentation we observe that there has never been unanimity at the university around certain emancipatory and libertarian processes. The hiring request dates back to June 1980, being valid from August 1st of that year, but the process continued until approval at the Consu meeting on June 25th, 1985 – and with the opposing vote of a counselor.”
Even so, adds the associate director of FE, approval only took place with the formation of a working group with Rubem Alves, Antonio Muniz de Rezende and Amelia Domingues de Castro as reviewers, in addition to Roberto Romano as head of the department in which Paulo Freire acted. “They were exquisite opinions, one of them from Professor Roberto Romano, highlighting Freire's national and international career and how much his method of adult literacy revolutionized the work dynamics between educator and student in the classroom, considering the reality of these high school students. poverty, vulnerability and difficult access to a literate culture; and as much as books Education as a practice of freedom e Pedagogy of the Oppressed promoted didactic-pedagogical and political-pedagogical ruptures in Brazil and around the world.”
Débora Mazza says that Antonio Muniz de Rezende, in turn, praised learning not only from the works of Paulo Freire, but also in everyday life, humility, generosity of treatment and availability to be with social movements and adult literacy groups . “The opinion that became famous, by Rubem Alves [whose full text we reproduce again below], has a more persuasive tone, stating that there was no way to give the opinion of a person who was above the referees themselves and even the University Council, and leaving Of course, the question was not whether or not we want to have Professor Paulo Freire with us, but whether he wants to work alongside us.”
Freire returned from exile in 1980, already aware of the interest of Unicamp and the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP) in hiring him, expressed in a letter sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1981, even without a definitive contract with Unicamp, he was the most voted for rector by the academic community, in the first democratic election at a Brazilian university. His name, however, was ignored by the collegiate of unit directors and representatives of the state government, and by the then governor Paulo Maluf, who decided on José Aristodemo Pinotti, under the protests of the teaching and student bodies.
The educator, pedagogue and philosopher from Pernambuco requested his dismissal in a letter written in his own handwriting to the rector Carlos Vogt, on March 4, 1991. He expressed his gratitude for the invitations received from Unicamp and PUC “while still in exile, in Geneva, without passport and prohibited from even visiting Brazil”, and justifies his departure with the impossibility of accumulating his pensions at UFPE (where he was readmitted by the Minister of Education without having asked, just as he did not request a review of his case under the law of amnesty) and retirement from Unicamp (which would come in a few months due to the age limit): “No matter how much love I feel for Unicamp, no matter how honored I felt to be its retired professor, it would not be wise, in today's times, to stay with 33.000 [of pay] giving up 246.000.”
Patron of Education
Paulo Freire (1921-1997) became recognized as “Patron of Brazilian Education” with Law No. 12.612, of April 13, 2012, signed by Dilma Rousseff, for having dedicated a large part of his life to literacy and education. poor population. In 1961, at the University of Recife (now UFPE), he implemented a method to teach 300 sugarcane cutters to read and write in 45 days. His successful experiences were included by the João Goulart government in the National Literacy Plan, which would be aborted shortly afterwards by the military. Arrested and expelled from the country, Freire spent 16 years in exile teaching in Chile, the United States (Harvard), Switzerland, England and Portuguese-speaking African countries that were experiencing liberation processes. The book Pedagogy of the Oppressed it was translated into more than 40 languages, appearing in a survey by the London School of Economics as the third most cited work in humanities studies; It is also the only Brazilian title on the list of the XNUMX most referenced by English-speaking universities.
President Jair Bolsonaro, who during the election campaign was already a fierce critic of Paulo Freire and his literacy method, announced that he will change the patron of Brazilian education, in an interview on April 29th, for a YouTube channel. On the same day, federal deputy Caroline De Toni (PSL-SC) filed a proposal providing for the repeal of Law 12.612, while her colleague Carlos Jordy (PSL-RJ) presented bill 22 on May 3033, granting the honor to Saint José de Anchieta, a Spanish Jesuit considered a precursor of education in the country and who helped in the founding of the Colégio de São Paulo de Piratininga, the embryo of the city of São Paulo.
In the opinion of professor Débora Mazza, in the face of so many dismantling and attacks on the humanities and education, the unveiling of the plaque on the main building of the Faculty of Education is a concrete way of showing that there is hope. “Hope, as Paulo Freire said, is action. At a time when society and the market are not very interested in investing in social and educational policies, we need to discuss the role of humanities at Unicamp; what is the importance, the social function of being here; what are the guidelines that build less unequal and less violent societies. Because we are at a time when voracity seems to be on the rise.”
The associate director of FE states that a very recurring idea in Paulo Freire's works is that we humans are unfinished beings. “Unfinished, but we are constituted on the firm ground of history, with the educational process that makes us collective human beings, and not biological, selfish, individualistic, self-referential beings. That is why the educational process is so long, requiring many years to see the effect of a value that we teach to a child recognized in action. When we see banners in defense of education being torn down [at UFPR, during the Bolsonarist demonstrations on May 26], the question I ask as a mother, teacher and researcher is: what is left for society? Barbarism remains, leaving our biological, savage side.”
Rubem Alves' 'no opinion' about
Paulo Freire's admission to Unicamp
The objective of an opinion, as the word itself suggests, is to tell someone who supposedly saw nothing and who, for this very reason, knows nothing, what it appears to be, in the eyes of the speaker or writer. Whoever gives an opinion lends his eyes, his discernment to someone else who has not seen or been able to meditate on the issue at hand. This is necessary because the problems are many and our eyes are just two…
There are, however, certain issues on which issuing an opinion is almost an offense. Give an opinion on Nietzsche, or Beethoven, or Cecília Meireles? For this to happen it would be necessary for the signatory of the document to be older than them, and his name to be better known and more trustworthy than those about whom he writes...
An opinion on Paulo Réglus Neves Freire.
His name is known in universities throughout the world. Won't it be here, at UNICAMP? And is this why I should add my signature (known, domestic name) as guarantor?
I don't know how many languages your books will be published in. I imagine (and I may well be wrong) that none of our other teachers will have published so much, in so many languages. The theses that have already been written about his thought form bibliographies of many pages. And the articles written about his thinking and educational practice, if published, would be books.
His name, by itself, without domestic opinions to endorse it, passes through universities in North America and Europe. And whoever wanted to add their own “letter of introduction” to this name would only make a ridiculous appearance.
No. I cannot assume that this name is not known at UNICAMP. This would offend those who make up its decision-making bodies.
Therefore, my opinion is a refusal to give an opinion.
And in this refusal there is, implicitly and explicitly, the astonishment that I should add my name to Paulo Freire's. As if, without mine, it wouldn't sustain itself.
But it stands on its own.
Paulo Freire reached the highest point that an educator can reach.
The question is not whether we want to have him with us.
The question is whether he wants to work alongside us.
It’s good to tell your friends: “Paulo Freire is my colleague. We have rooms in the same corridor as the Faculty of Education at UNICAM…”
That's what I had to say.
Campinas, May 25, 1985.
RUBEM AZEVEDO ALVES
Professor
TV Unicamp provides testimonials from Paulo Freire in two videos on YouTube
Meeting with Paulo Freire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhGtsDPKKNo&feature=youtu.be
Title Honoris Causa to Paulo Freire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yRyAXPXHmA&t=221s
