By PAULO FERNANDES SILVEIRA*
Lecture-class of the MST National Pedagogy Course.
1.
Although I am a professor, researcher and advisor at the Faculty of Education of the University of São Paulo (FEUSP), education is not the main theme of my research on the work of Florestan Fernandes, my maternal grandfather. In recent years, I have dedicated myself to studying Florestan Fernandes' books on racism and the black question.
On the other hand, in 2023, I published the text “Social walling in Florestan Fernandes’ school experiences”, in the collection: In defense of public schools, organized by professors Jacqueline Moll and Maria Carmem Barbosa.
What I intend to do in this communication, a bit like I tried to do in the text published in 2023, is to highlight the importance of Florestan Fernandes's schooling and life in the construction of the militant intellectual that he became.
One of Fernandes Florestan's first important works at USP was research for UNESCO on racism in São Paulo, carried out in the early 1950s, with professor Roger Bastide.
Among the strategies used in the research, Florestan Fernandes and Roger Bastide invited activists from the black movement to talk about their experiences. Several round tables were organized with these activists. The meetings took place at the Faculty of Philosophy at USP, at the Municipal Library and at the José do Patrocínio Association. The arguments developed by the activists were incorporated and cited in the texts that Florestan and Bastide wrote for the research.
I bring up this reference to UNESCO research at the beginning of my speech to highlight, precisely, the way in which Florestan Fernandes' education marked the militant intellectual that he became.
Antonio Candido makes the following analysis of Florestan's contribution to UNESCO research: “He helped Roger Bastide to set up one of the most beautiful sociological analysis schemes I have ever seen; they mobilized the black community. Instead of going there to study the object, they pulled the black community to be the subject at the same time. In other words, the black person, based on Florestan and Bastide's research, stopped being an object of study and became a subject of study: he participated, he spoke, he guided, together with the researchers.” (CANDIDO, 2004, 18m. 52s-19m. 24s).
As a counterpoint, I would like to cite a criticism of this research strategy put into practice by Florestan Fernandes and Roger Bastide.
In 2014, students from the Faculty of Philosophy at USP organized a meeting to honor the 50th anniversary of the publication of the book The integration of black people into class society, by Florestan Fernandes. One of the panels at the meeting, however, was only concerned with criticizing the book. At a certain point in his presentation, Sidney Chalhoub, a professor at Unicamp and Harvard University, argued: “I am very different from Florestan, (…) I learn things through research. (…) I learned nothing of what I presented through activism, I learned through studying.” (CHALHOUB, 2014, 24m. 40s-26m. 38s).
According to Sidney Chalhoub, academic research should be based on documents, archives and books by recognized authors, not on the experiences of activism.
In the text “Ideology and experience”, which I wrote with the professor and activist of the black movement Josadaque Silva, we analyzed the positions of some authors who defend experience as a legitimate and necessary way of understanding reality and producing knowledge.
One of the authors we analyzed in the text was the late bell hooks, I quote her: “Identity politics arises from the struggle of oppressed or exploited groups to assume a position from which they can criticize dominant structures, a position that gives purpose and meaning to the struggle. Critical pedagogies of liberation address these concerns and necessarily embrace experience, confessions, and testimonies as valid modes of knowledge, as important and vital dimensions of any learning process.” (hooks, 2013, p. 120).
Unfortunately, I will not have time to discuss the issues and positions that permeate this debate. I will focus on reading Antonio Candido, who points to the richness and originality of Florestan Fernandes and Roger Bastide's research, in giving the floor to the activists of the black movement.
My hypothesis, which I intend to develop in this communication, is that Florestan Fernandes' educational and life background contributed to his academic research giving attention and listening to people who face all types of social injustice.
2.
In the late 1970s, upon returning from the exile imposed on him by the last military dictatorship, Florestan Fernandes produced a series of texts about his career up until the moment he was expelled from USP.
In some of these texts, Florestan Fernandes manages to work through his sadness and anguish with the help of references from sociology and literature. To save time and to make this communication more beautiful and interesting, I will avoid interrupting Florestan Fernandes' testimonies with my reflections.
Childhood and work on the streets
The son of a single mother, my great-grandmother Maria Fernandes, a Portuguese immigrant who worked in São Paulo as a maid and washerwoman, Florestan Fernandes had to work when he was still a boy. I quote him: “At the age of six, I began my practical life. My first job was cleaning the clothes of customers in a barber shop, which was located on Major Quedinho. (…) From there, I moved on to several other types of work, all very occasionally. I worked in a butcher shop, in a tailor shop. Later, I discovered that what paid the most for a child like me was shining shoes.” (FERNANDES, 1980, p. 11).
“Doing what I was forced to do was also compelled to constantly seek to overcome a condition in which lumpenproletariat (and not the worker) defined the limits or boundaries of what was not 'people'. Before studying this process in research on black people, I experienced it in all its nuances and magnitudes”. (FERNANDES, 1977, p. 143).
“The prejudices against 'that kind of people' reached such proportions that, not even with the support of Clara Augusta Bresser, my godmother's sister, did I ever get another kind of job. The least anyone thought about that 'kind of people' was that we were 'thieves' or 'useless'!” (FERNANDES, 1977, p. 148).
“I was a bit isolated, as I worked a lot and spent a lot of time away from home, I couldn’t have a child’s life. My life was that of an adult, very premature, so what I really lacked was childhood socialization. (…) My adult experience was anticipated both on a practical and intellectual level.” (FERNANDES, 1980, p. 12).
“As a child, I had little opportunity to have emotional contact. If a child was open to my friendship, I would throw myself into it very deeply. (…) There was another deep friendship, a boy who was also a shoeshine boy, a very intelligent and sensitive boy. He died about two years after I met him, he died of tuberculosis and hunger. For us, it was not easy to survive. It was a hard life, which seems like television literature. This happened frequently, people fell along the way.” (FERNANDES, 1980, p. 15).
“I got to know the tragic side of life in São Paulo, so when I studied black people, there was a lot of personal experience. It wasn’t a shared experience.” (FERNANDES, 1980, p. 11).
Maria José School Group (Mazé)
Among his few and brief school experiences, Florestan Fernandes studied for a few years at the Maria José School Group (also known as Mazé), a school that is still open in the Bixiga neighborhood. In a text about Florestan's schooling, teacher Maria Helena de Souza Patto provides information about this school: “The teachers were extremely respected, despite being demanding and hitting the students with rulers and even with a pool cue. If they showed any indiscipline, they would be locked in a dark room, probably the science room, where there was a skeleton.” (Centenary of the Maria José School: 1895-1995). The neediest children received soup and warm clothes, but there were students who came with shoes full of holes, others who didn't even have shoes, and others who alternately bandaged one of their feet to save the only pair they had.”
“In the 1930s, Florestan Fernandes was on the list of enrolled boys. His school experience left him with memories of scenes of violence, which brought schools closer, as he would later say, to punitive and prison institutions. (…) He also left behind an awareness of the exclusion and authoritarianism present at the heart of school life.” (PATTO, 2000, p. 121-122).
Regarding his school experiences, Florestan Fernandes states: “Like many of the others, I was a 'rebellious student'. School, in fact, was not part of 'our culture' and hindered our immediate thoughts. Not only did I skip classes, once in a while, but I also accepted the violence that undermined our culture of potential macho men. (…) Education itself did not attract us either”. (FERNANDES, 1977, p. 145-146).
“In the third year I had to leave school to devote full time to work; and only much later, when I was just over 17, when I could make the decision for myself, would I return to school. However, the teachers had done their job with me, teaching me many hygienic habits and life ideals, which I never abandoned, a certain love for reading and the desire to connect my curiosity to the books that fell within my reach”. (FERNANDES, 1977, p. 146).
Inspired by his own experience, professor Torquato Silva, who also had to earn a living as a boy, discusses school dropouts: “Many students from the lower classes drop out of school in search of knowledge that can bring more immediate results to their lives. (…) It is of fundamental importance that we reflect deeply on how cruel this order imposed on children from the favelas and street dwellers is, since these people bring with them values and expectations, stemming from their socialization, which often contradict the school’s own beliefs and curricular practices.” (SILVA, 2009, p. 94).
Maturity course
At seventeen, Florestan Fernandes managed to resume his studies, enrolling in a preparatory gymnasium for the maturity exams, I quote him: “The final touch of this preparation sui generis was given by the maturity course. While he was working at Bar Bidu, on Lidero Badaró Street, the Riachuelo gymnasium was set up in the neighboring building. The teachers would go to the bar for a snack after class.”
“I was always on the lookout for customers from whom I could learn something. I cultivated relationships with some of the teachers – the most communicative and assiduous – and obtained a concession, through Professor Jair de Azevedo Ribeiro, to do the studies at a reduced rate”.
“Thanks to Manoel Lopes de Oliveira Neto, one of the customers I had become friends with, I found another job (delivering samples from the Novoterápica Laboratory); and thanks to the support of Ivana and José de Castro Manso Preto, who were connected to my late godmother, a small marginal allowance (which later became permanent food and bed), the problem of studying was reduced to its simplest expression. Leaving the bar and having a new opportunity, at that time (1937), was something remarkable”. (…) “The iron circle had been broken and, with the new job, I could support my mother and pay for my studies”. (FERNANDES, 1977, p. 147-148).
“When I decided to take the maturity course, I faced rustic resistance from my mother, who thought I would 'be ashamed of her' if I studied; much worse was the lack of understanding and mockery from my classmates, who ridiculed my propensity for reading and my attachment to books, saying that I would end up 'soft-headed' from reading so much”. (FERNANDES, 1977, p. 147).
“Riachuelo soon revealed a new world, in which teachers and lessons would not be the only axis. The students shared certain difficulties with me – not all of them. None of them had such rough origins and such profound uprooting. However, they all worked hard and saw in the maturity course an instrumentality that I was unaware of.” (FERNANDES, 1977, p. 149).
“At Riachuelo I not only learned the subjects of the maturity courses and broadened my cultural horizons. I gradually became an intellectual. I began to think seriously about taking a higher education course and decided that I would be a teacher.” (FERNANDES, 1977, p. 152-153).
University Experience
In the early 1940s, Florestan Fernandes and other colleagues who studied with him at the Riachuelo gymnasium managed to pass the maturity exams (which correspond to the current EJA and ENEM). After passing the maturity exam, some took the entrance exam.
Regarding this stage of his life, Florestan Fernandes commented: “I wanted to study chemical engineering, perhaps because of Jules Verne. But I couldn’t, I would have to stay in school all day and I had to work. Therefore, I didn’t take any courses that were in my preferred field. (…) So I chose social sciences.” (FERNANDES, 1980, p. 15).
Regarding acceptance into the Faculty of Philosophy at USP, Florestan Fernandes made the following sociological analysis: “Someone could write: the lumpenproletariat arrives at the University of São Paulo. However, it was not the lumpenproletariat who arrived there; it was me, the son of a former washerwoman. (…) I brought with me pure intentions, the passion to learn and, who knows, to become a secondary school teacher”. (FERNANDES, 1977, p. 154).
In the 1980s, in the book Educational challenge, Florestan Fernandes argues that: “The time has come to open the doors of the university to those who have been expelled and rejected by it. Students who, like me, arrived at the university by chance, must arrive systematically”. (FERNANDES, 1989, p. 110).
Florestan Fernandes' experience as a student in the social sciences course at USP was not easy. I quote him: “I was like a stranger and, in many respects, an intruder. The core of that small group came from traditional middle or upper class families. (…) If they did not reveal themselves to be hostile, they did not open the floodgates of their 'circle' either. I was left out and felt that it was not up to me to change the unspoken rules of the game, which would make my strong smell of rabble unbearable.” (FERNANDES, 1977, p. 154).
Soon after completing his undergraduate degree, Florestan Fernandes completed his master's degree and became a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy at USP. Florestan himself analyzes the importance of his educational background and his life path in the development of the militant intellectual he became. I quote him: “My disposition to nonconformity was based on my own situation of existence. Everything happened as if I had suddenly become a spokesperson for the frustrations and revolt of my former childhood and youth companions.”
“My state of mind made the university professor speak on behalf of the son of the former Portuguese maid and washerwoman, who had to earn his living before he was even seven years old, shining shoes or dedicating himself to other occupations that were equally degraded, in a severe way, at that time.” (FERNANDES, 1966, p. XIX).
Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk about Florestan Fernandes, in this beautiful school that bears his name and that holds a little of the history of my mother, the sociologist and former teacher at this National School, Heloisa Fernandes.
* Paulo Fernandes Silveira Professor at the Faculty of Education at USP and researcher at the Human Rights Group at the Institute for Advanced Studies at USP.
References
CANDIDO, Antonio (2004). Testimony. In. Florestan Fernandes: the master. Brasilia: Chamber of Deputies. (Video). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB3TDIv4POk
CHALHOUB, Sidney (2014). Communication. In. DAVID, Antonio, Table 3. (Video). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHuLcUgKO3k&t=6705s
FERNANDES, Florestan (1989). The university is wild. In: FERNANDES, Florestan. The educational challenge. New York: Oxford University Press;
FERNANDES, Florestan (1980). Florestan Fernandes: the person and the politician, Essay Magazine, Year IV, n. 8, p. 9-39. Available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LTnoa-M44kWQ_12YiEQRGAjSyycnhPqa/view
FERNANDES, Florestan (1977). In search of a critical and militant sociology. In.FERNANDES, Florestan. Sociology in Brazil: contribution to the study of its formation and development. Petropolis: Voices, p. 140-212.
FERNANDES, Florestan (1966). Education and society in Brazil. New York: Routledge;
hooks, bell (2013). Essentialism and experience. In. hooks, bell. teaching to transgress: education as a practice of freedom. São Paulo: WMF Martins Fontes, p. 105-125.
PATTO, Maria (2000). Lessons in activism. In: PATTO, Maria Helena, Mutations of Captivity: Writings on Psychology and Politics. New York: Routledge, p. 119-156.
SILVA, Josadaque; SILVEIRA, Paulo (2023). Ideology and experience: Marilena Chaui, bell hooks and Grada Kilomba. GGN newspaper: Available at: https://jornalggn.com.br/artigos/ideologia-e-experiencia-chaui-bell-hooks-e-grada-kilomba/
SILVA, Torquato (2009). Favela school, knowledge, transgression and power: are these boys hopeless?, PUC-Campinas Education Journal, no. 27, p. 87-96. Available in: https://periodicos.puc-campinas.edu.br/reveducacao/article/view/73
SILVER, Paul (2023). Social walling in the school experiences of Florestan Fernandes. In. MOLL, Jacqueline; BARBOSA, Márcia (orgs.). In defense of public schools. Pedagogies of Public Education in the Struggle for Democracy. Porto Alegre: Editora Sulinas, p. 174-189.
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