By *
Modern pedagogy, which is totalitarian, questions nothing, and treats those who question it with disdain and cruelty. For this very reason it must be combated.
This year, I had the displeasure of coming across an unpleasant criterion in the notice of a Federal Institute (IF), located in the Northeast: it required the use of “active methodologies”. I hate them.
I won’t even go into the fact that “methodologies” have become a pedantic jargon used by pedagogues, many of whom have never taught, although they insist on monitoring teaching work under the banner of management, a hallmark of neoliberalism. As we know, neoliberalism considers the school as a company and the student as a client – and the client, of course, is always right.
The customer has to like the commercial product in the form of a “class”, and that is exactly why the fallacies of the New School and constructivists have been “scientifically” supporting the so-called active “methodologies” for about a hundred years, which supposedly provide inexhaustible motivation to the student, whether he is sufficiently intelligent and committed to the studies he has to do at home, or not. However, for the “progressive” bias of pedagogy, the blame for any failure can only lie with the teaching procedures, which, out of pedanticism, pedagogues call “methodologies”.
I always use the term teaching procedures because I consider it more precise, even though precision is a consequence of its scope. However, even if I used the word methodologies, which has been used so frivolously that it has become devoid of real meaning, the following question would still be appropriate: When were “passive” methodologies created? In which disciplines and at what levels are they applicable? Why do they insist on demonizing traditional teaching?
I divide the teaching that pedagogy demonized into the following stages: review of the content of the previous class; launching content; explanation and exemplification of new content; fixing the subject matter through formative assessment; students' doubts.
The above scheme allows for induction, deduction, analogy and maieutics, and is in line with traditional and content-based teaching methods, which are centered on data analysis. In teaching, data make up the subject matter, while in research, they make up the corpus. This is the only similarity between teaching and research: the study procedures revolve around data, so teaching and research are inseparable. However, they are very different practices. Every good teacher is a good researcher. Hence the ease of concluding that the “argument” that researchers do not know how to teach is a fallacy.
This is a resentment against true academics, who value the organization of data and clarity, which does not exclude a dose of technical-scientific vocabulary or the student's effort. These last two attributes are rejected by modern pedagogy, although the same defenders of “active methodologies” (who, like members of a totalitarian sect, do not accept criticism of their dogmas) mercilessly fail students who do not show aptitude for a master's or doctorate. (There are, of course, capable people who fail for other reasons. One of them is the fact that they do not flatter the professors in the graduate program, although I myself never witnessed this during my time as a master's student.)
The five-step process is also in line with the premise that the student never becomes passive by adopting what the linguist Mikhail Bakhtin considered to be the responsive-active attitude. While the receiver of the message receives the text, he or she imagines responses or doubts, as long as he or she pays attention. Therefore, I cannot accept the assumption that there are “active” methodologies. However, the concept of “active” methodologies is unsustainable, since “passive” methodologies have never existed.
Furthermore, we must take into account the origin of my step-by-step approach, which is Herbart's didactics, described as follows: “this traditional teaching was structured through a pedagogical method, which is the expository method, which everyone knows, everyone has gone through it, and many are still going through it, whose theoretical matrix can be identified in Herbart's five formal steps. These steps, which are the steps of preparation, presentation, comparison and assimilation, generalization and, finally, application, correspond to the scheme of the inductive scientific method, as formulated by Bacon, a method that we can schematize in three fundamental moments: observation, generalization and confirmation. It is, therefore, the same method formulated within the philosophical movement of empiricism, which was the basis for the development of modern science” [SAVIANI, 2021, p. 35-6].
To the above fragment we must add another: “if the students did the exercises correctly, they assimilated the previous knowledge, then I can move on to the new one. If they did not do it correctly, then I need to give new exercises, the learning process needs to be extended a little longer, and the teaching team needs to pay attention to the reasons for this delay” [SAVIANI, 2021, p. 37].
Furthermore, for Mr. Luckesi, “the method can be understood within a theoretical conception or a technical understanding. The author understands Methodology as the conception according to which reality is approached. This is a theoretical conception of the method. However, he states that there is a technical understanding of the method that also permeates the content, since “they are technical ways of acting that are within the content that is taught” (p. 138). Example: the way of extracting a square root (Mathematics) or the way of proceeding in a syntactic analysis (Portuguese). Both of them permeate the contents covered in the different curricular disciplines” [GRUMBACH and SANTOS, 2012, p. 33].
In effect: “All knowledge is permeated by a methodology and it is possible to discover in the exposed content itself the method with which it was constructed [LUCKESI, 1995, p. 138 apud GRUMBACH and SANTOS, 2012, p. 34]”.
Why do so many academics defend “active” methodologies? Why do they insist on defending this pedagogical fiction in basic education and even in higher education? I can list a few factors.
First of all, the university, even if it is public, continues to be an ideological apparatus of the State. Once the State is in the hands of the market, the academic environment becomes a captain in the woods of neoliberalism, whose “moral” axis and epistemological axis are extreme individualism, linked to entrepreneurship. It is the university that, within neoliberalism, has a power equivalent to the power that the Catholic Church had in the Middle Ages, according to one of the arguments of sociologist Jessé Souza.
Without the “scientific” endorsement of the university, a pedagogy that demeans teachers would not be possible, and in fact it does demean them with the regularity of the sun. Just look at the moral harassment that teachers suffer in municipal and state schools. In the state network of Espírito Santo, for example, there is a decree that requires surveillance in the classroom and a list of descriptors to be applied by teachers, who are treated as if they were employees of a franchised fast food restaurant. If teachers do not comply with this nonsense, they will be held accountable for it. They will also be held accountable if they do not use outdated technologies, purchased with public money. This taste for technology, which is used as if it were an end, and not a means, is a legacy of technicality, a pedagogical tendency implemented in Brazil during the military dictatorship.
Funding for “research” in modern pedagogy is conditioned on lines of research that do not improve teaching or the professional lives of teachers, but it is certain that they reinforce school “inclusion” in a country with open sewers, according to the World Bank manual.
Another factor in the intellectual dishonesty of doctors who defend the nonsense in the form of “active methodology” is the need to make teaching “fun” and “attractive” so that students stay in school, even if they don’t study. It is thanks to this pseudo-inclusion that incompetent and uneducated politicians and bureaucrats are able to promote themselves. “Thus,” writes the Swedish Inger Enkvist (2021, p. 83), “politicians have ruined public schools while pretending to be their defenders.” No matter how hot the classrooms are, no matter how few fans there are, no matter how little erudition they have, no matter how little well-equipped libraries are protected by librarians (rare professionals): what matters is that the teacher motivates the students, even if his or her mental health is in tatters. And woe betide the teacher who does not use the other “pedagogical spaces” in the school to please the “class leaders”, who watch the teacher as much as children watch their parents in a novel. 1984, by George Orwell.
It is no surprise that educators are against content-based and transmissive teaching: they have no content to transmit: their litany is devoid of substance: it is a catechism of nothing. If they really believed in the transformative power of education, they would believe in student effort and in teaching based on academic knowledge, and not in practical activities that require cutting and gluing paper or drawings of weeds and flowers. They treat all students as if they were children, regardless of the level of education and the modality.
In the case of language education, everything comes down to a superficial view of typologies or textual types (of which there are five) and textual genres (which are practically unlimited). Students are offered bad texts that talk about social networks and other topics that are popular with the market. Educators love this because they don't realize that they are emphasizing the formation of consumers for the cultural industry, full of common sense and fake teenagers from TV series. Nickelodeon.
All of this, however, is consistent with the intellectually dishonest view of the sectarians of “active methodologies”. In fact, a teacher who has received only a cursory education is the perfect justification for receiving a low salary. He or she can be an agent of social “inclusion”, a “facilitator” of learning, but he or she can never be an authority on the subject he or she teaches, unless he or she wants to run the risk of being labeled a tyrant. Anyone who does not bow to the dogmas of the sectarians is persecuted to the point of being subject to a PAD (Administrative Disciplinary Proceeding).
The teacher does not actually teach: the student does “activities” to stay “active”, but does not go on an intellectual adventure, as this type of exercise requires effort and conditions that the managers do not provide, either due to incompetence or ill will. Now, if the student has to do “activities” filling out papers in the name of external assessments, the teacher does not have to be a model of how an intellectual thinks and acts.
Despite everything, I am convinced that, although it is impossible to start inclusion through schools alone in a country where students barely have enough to eat at home – and defending the opposite would be as absurd as saying that charging tuition fees to “rich” students at public universities would be a form of equality and inclusion –, it is a fact that countries that did not follow modern pedagogy, full of inept projects, “active” methodologies and other nonsense that only interests businesspeople, achieved more equality and inclusion than those that adopted modern pedagogy.
Those who need traditional education the most are precisely the poor. Sweden is an example of what modern pedagogy does: there, totalitarianism has taken hold, and this is because the school system has made its citizens stupid. These are the harmful effects of the New School and constructivism, anti-scientific trends ignored by many teachers, accustomed as they are to the “status” of teaching pawns. If, in the past, everyone had rebelled against the fallacies of Carl Rogers, an exponent of the non-directive line and the obvious fact that learning happens in the student’s brain, perhaps they would have been able to exorcise the ghost of John Dewey as well. Both authors are obsolete, and yet their “scientific” theses continue to prevail over teachers, who ignore the references with which they could combat the fallacies of the scientists of Arabia.
I said we are being watched. This has been going on for decades! “Between our body and our sexuality,” writes Marilena Chauí (2018, p. 113-14), “there is the speech of the sexologist, between our work and our work, there is the speech of the technician, between us as workers and the employers, there is the speech of the specialist in ‘human relations’, between the mother and the child, there is the speech of the pediatrician and the nutritionist, between us and nature, the speech of the ecologist, between us and our class, the speech of the sociologist and the political scientist, between us and our soul, the speech of the psychologist (often to deny that we have a soul, that is, consciousness). And between us and our students, the speech of the pedagogue.”
But there is more: Let us see what the Swedish Inger Enkvist (2020, p. 275-6) says: “[...] pedagogues do not function in a scientific or democratic manner, but as a sect with a special faith that does not question the foundations of its beliefs. Self-proclaimed teaching experts, they present themselves as a superior authority to other teachers who “only” teach their subjects. The first phase was the indoctrination of teachers to justify the presence of pedagogues. Since they are not responsible for any teaching, their presence constitutes a type of parasitism in the educational systems [...]. As is typical of sects, they despise others. The pedagogues are the good ones, the ones who know the truth, and they have introduced a new language for the initiates. In addition to a belief and a language of their own, a sect also needs money, and in this case the members of the group have managed to establish themselves within the structures of the public service, and live off the taxpayers’ money.”
Many educators, without ever having taught, in total disregard of Article 67 of the LDB (Law of Guidelines and Bases of Education), become school principals… sorry: they become school managers – and the manager, as Marilena Chauí points out, is analogous to the gangster within neoliberalism. This is as absurd as putting a non-doctor or a doctor who has never practiced in the hospital as director. There are also those who become supervisors or inspectors, who are like bush captains.
We need to rise up against modern pedagogy: we must hold public debates based on truth, and the truth is that these so-called “active methodologies” do not work: they are a shameful failure, and this must be exposed in symposiums and other communications held at academic events, even if this ends up hurting the vanity of the doctors from Arabia who venerate Lattes.
Another important step is to challenge the notices that say that teachers must be evaluated based on their use of these so-called active “methodologies.” By law, each of us teachers has the right to different pedagogical concepts, and the one I have adopted is traditional. I cannot be forced to distort years of academic knowledge just because academics themselves want to select people who agree with their nonsense.
In August 2024, I came in second place in the objective test for a Federal Institute located in the Southeast. Later, I found out that I had been disqualified in the didactic test: I scored 48 on a scale of 0 to 100. Unless the board accepts my appeal, all the time and money invested in travel and accommodation will have been in vain. I cannot say that the fact that I included Saviani's excerpts and Bakhtin's concept in the header of the lesson plan to support the oppositions I make to “active methodologies” in that document harmed me, especially because the scoreboard did not present the use of such “methodologies” as an evaluation criterion for the didactic test, but the subjectivity of the evaluators, judging by their resumes, is riddled with pedagogical nonsense of the “activities” kind.
Interestingly, despite all the “progressivism”, the board had required knowledge that is included in the grammar of Evanildo Bechara, an author who, for many, is extremely conservative. The objective questions had also required knowledge that could only be accumulated by a teacher with an academic profile, although a good teacher could fail at that stage: questions were asked about the thinking of authors whose books were not mentioned in the notice, which did not even contain a bibliography.
My suggestion remains: we must rise up against pedagogical fallacies. This means that we must make a movement from the bottom up, so that the academic community is reached: it is the one that gives the “scientific” endorsement to all the barbarity that we, teachers, suffer, and which is even more dangerous than that of the Brazilian military dictatorship or the Cultural “Revolution” in China. The latter openly persecuted teachers and other intellectuals.
We should not be afraid: in a democracy, contestation is healthy; in science, there can only be truth when we question assumptions and methods, that is: knowledge is only reliable when epistemology and paradigms are challenged and tested. Modern pedagogy, which is totalitarian, questions nothing, and treats those who question it with disdain and cruelty. For this very reason, it must be combated.
*Marcio Alessandro de Oliveira He has a master's degree in Literary Studies from UERJ and is a teacher in the Espírito Santo state network..
References
BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Discourse genres. In: Aesthetics of Verbal Creation. Translated from the French by Maria Emsantina Galvão G. Pereira. 2nd ed. SP: Martins Fontes, 1997.
CARNEIRO, Moaci Alves. Easy LDB: critical-comprehensive reading, article by article. Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes, 2018.
CHAUÍ, Marilena. What does it mean to be an educator today? From art to science: the death of the educator. In: In defense of public, free and democratic education. Organized by Homero Santiago. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2018. ENKVIST, Inger. The complex job of being a teacher. Translated by Ricardo Harada. 1st ed. Campinas, SP: Editora Kírion, 2021.
______. Good and bad education: international examples” (translated by Felipe Denardi. São Paulo: Kírion, 2020.
ORWEL, George. 1984. Translated by Alexandre Hubner and Heloisa Jahn. New York: Routledge, 2014.
It looks like a revolution, but it's just neoliberalism: the university professor amid the authoritarian crusades of the right and the left. In: Piaui (Folha de São Paulo). Jan. 2021. Available at: .
SANTOS, Ana Lucia Cardoso; GRUMBACH, Gilda Maria. Didactics for Bachelor's Degree: Support for Teaching Practice (volumes 1 and 2). Rio de Janeiro: Cecierj Foundation, 2012.
SAVIANI, Dermeval. School and democracy. Campinas, SP: Associated Authors, 2021.
SOUZA, Jesse. The Late Elite. Rio de Janeiro: Leya, 2017.
______. The foolishness of Brazilian intelligence: or how the country allows itself to be manipulated by the elite. 2nd ed. Rio de Janeiro: Leya, 2018.
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