By ANTONIO SIMPLICIO DE ALMEIDA NETO*
Why not refuse what is imposed, what harms?
He was never absent, he never went on leave, nor did he use “paid absences”. As soon as the bell rang, they went to the class scheduled in the timetable. It was like this from Monday to Friday, mornings, afternoons and nights. I had lunch and dinner at school, I often managed to get some snacks for the students, whether it was rice with grated tuna and canned peas or chocolate milk with biscuits. He was addicted to the coffee in the staff room, without caring if it was fresh or reheated.
I worked at school “XYZ” since 2007, or so. He was one of the oldest. In recent years, his classes have become little or not creative at all, especially after he started using the teaching material from “São Paulo Faz Escola”, with its student and teacher handouts. He entered the room, as if in a ritual, checked the scheduled and prescribed class, three classes for Enlightenment in the 7th grade, four classes for the Russian Revolution in the 8th grade, four classes for the Renaissance in the 6th grade... and so on, bimonthly by bimonthly. He opened the booklet, read the lesson and asked students to answer pre-determined questions, the answers to which could be easily obtained on the web.
The professor was 37 years old, he started teaching as a student, he completed an excellent degree course in history and a master's degree. stricto sensu. He started his PhD, but dropped out. He started following the booklets: “Teacher’s Notebook” and “Student’s Notebook”.
That morning, during the pedagogical planning meeting, I informed that we would follow a new curriculum, the BNCC. I explained that it was a document “made by experts”, which corresponded to the “demands of contemporary students”, which contained the “set of essential learning for Brazilian students”. But Bartleby[I] I stared through the window of the room in which we were gathered towards the high wall that surrounded our school, two or three meters away, creating a somewhat claustrophobic situation. He seemed to ignore my presence and that of the teachers of other subjects. He looked through and sipped the warm, reheated coffee from the thermos.
That bothered me. I was the pedagogical coordinator and his aloofness sounded disrespectful, seemed somewhat insolent, the arrogance of a historian... I had joined the school, by removal, two years before him. He seemed to be a good guy, very affectionate, single (he still is, single and without children, on the grounds that he didn't want to leave the legacy of his misery to anyone, an explanation that I never quite understood), studious, he was always carrying books, titles complex, maintained good relationships with other teachers, students and staff.
Right after the coffee break I decided to ask him, exposing him in front of his peers at the meeting, attentive and active partners, who brought cookies, box cake and toast with onion cream pâté, and I asked him about the importance of following the BNCC of History, I spoke with reasonable propriety about skills and competencies, about learning rights, about alphanumeric codes and I even ventured to talk about the broad national consensus, the interfederative pact, the New Secondary Education, the Formative Tracks, and he concluded, with a choked voice…, remembering that the future of the new generations was in our hands. At the end of my explanation I said to him: “So, professor, what do you think about this?”
– I don't think so, said Bartleby, the History teacher.
Without showing any feeling or moving any muscle on his face, he responded to my question. He stared at the wall in front of the living room window, impassive. There was no sense of embarrassment, he looked like a sphinx enjoying reheated coffee.
I asked him again, first addressing everyone, so as not to seem like some personal persecution, and then directly to him, appealing to the importance of collective work. But he replied again:
– I don't think it's better.
Colleagues looked at each other, perplexed. It is true that Bartleby was never very expansive, he was always immersed in his books and thoughts. Occasionally, he would risk some laconic commentary on the political scenario and its ambiguities, which seemed to confuse rather than explain. The students even liked him. But this refusal to participate, right at the beginning of the school year, in the first pedagogical meeting, the laconic response shocked us.
The biology teacher rolled her eyes, impatiently, in disapproval. The geography classmate looked bored. The Portuguese language teacher was impatiently correcting essays for a pre-university course. The mathematics teacher looked indignantly at his physical education colleague, who made a move to attack Bartleby. Nothing irritates honest teachers more than passive resistance.
With the schedule late and to calm things down, I closed the meeting and wished everyone a great start to the year. Bartleby was still sitting in the same position, still looking at an imaginary point on the wall, through the window. On the way out, crossing the door, I said goodbye:
– We’ll talk another time, Bartleby! Have a good day!
Already in the corridor I heard:
– I don't think it's better.
That was the last time I saw Bartleby.
*Antonio Simplicio de Almeida Neto is a professor at the Department of History at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP). Author, among other books, of Utopian representations in history teaching (Ed. Unifesp). [https://amzn.to/4bYIdly]
Note
[I] Reference to Bartleby the Clerk – A Wall Street Story, by Herman Melville. [https://amzn.to/4dis6j2]
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