Lira, the lyre and education

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By LUIZ ROBERTO ALVES*

The mayor says it makes no sense to spend mandatory spending on education in the pandemic, with full support from the figure that disgraces even Chicago, Guedes

Now what the president of the Federal Chamber said is clear: the “bitter medicine” had nothing to do with Bolsonaro, but with other situations and facts. After all, the linguistic text existed and everything that is expressed must be translatable to be and count as a human phenomenon, as the world masters of language sciences teach us. Or could it be that Lira said nothing political and the bitter medicines were just remedies for her personal use to support indigestion, stomach congestion or anxiety?

Taking out the sinister figure from Planalto, Lira's partner, there is a possible translation of the text lyrical. It has to do with education, as the legislative power has just said (and has not revoked or apologized) that “it makes no sense to maintain mandatory spending on education in the pandemic” (CNN Business, Anna Russi and Beatriz Gurgel).

Probably the last field of knowledge in which Mr. Lira can give his pitacos is that of education. The only thing he knows is that there is a certain constitutional level (article 212) for investment and maintenance of educational activities in the three levels of government, as well as for health. Yes, he knows that, but he doesn't like it, as he prefers to waste this resource with parliamentary amendments, whatever they may be. These are Centrão's agreements, its exclusive world. However, he manages to rant that education resources could go to the pandemic and its sequels.

Besides, Lira doesn't know anything about education. Nor does he know that 1,5% of world GDP will fall this year due to the problems that the neglected pandemic is causing for all educational actions in the world. Nor do they know that it could and should be different if governments thought in February 2020 of the young generations (who did not ask to be born) and revolutionized investments, methodologies, new forms of care and teaching and ways of managing education. It is unlikely that Lira ignores that his Planalto partner did everything the other way around and that he did not give a damn about the educational process, which is justified by his total ignorance on the subject, along with all his ministers from the dying MEC.

Lira plays the lyre while setting fire to Brazilian education, with full support from the figure that disgraces even Chicago, Guedes. Regardless of the controversies surrounding the burning of Rome under Nero in AD 64, the picture is perfect in sound and meaning. To say what he said and it is translatable, Lira completely ignores what education is, how it is organized, what are its needs, what is the extent of educational acts in the continental country, who are the vulnerable children prioritized by public investment and what are the relationships between education policies and other policies, all in the process of being murdered by the current “government”.

Instead of prioritizing the projects that are being processed (undergoing?) in the Chamber and that can give encouragement and guidance to Brazilian education, Lira plans to set fire to what remains of it for this and perhaps other years under the power of a plague. Now, within a plague, a thousand parliamentary amendments may be of minimal interest and function as a detail in the life of municipalities. Not all, for sure. But, on the contrary, the force of culture – the place of symbols and ethical and aesthetic values ​​– and its systematic projection, which is education (culture and education are Siamese twins that, exceptionally, cannot undergo surgery) could be the solder, the league, the glue of local and regional politics to build new meanings in the context of horror. Not only spiritual senses, but also deeply material, everyday experiences, whether through the implementation of new study curricula (oh, if MEC existed!), through the installation of broadband internet in at least 80% of the 190 Brazilian schools of education basic education, due to the revaluation of teaching in its many extra hours in poorly explained mixed, remote and face-to-face teaching. Likewise, the culture-education connection in force in schools and school environments in the centers, peripheries, quilombos, forests, riverside regions, among nomadic groups, in large areas of the countryside, in short, everywhere, would bring encouragement in the midst of death-murder-genocide, guidance in the bewilderment and evasion of children and adolescents, special and safe welcome to provide guidance on hygiene and health. More: with many investments (and the wider use of true educational technologies, apart from the lucrative paraphernalia of certain companies) the educational-cultural community (new meaning and new value for the old schools atomized and fragmented in the territory) would have both guaranteed the health of the committed and well-trained teaching staff from all over the country, as it would have guaranteed that the students were creative agents in the field of different scientific, social, ecological, ethical and aesthetic knowledge. And it doesn't matter if they acted from their homes, from the various forms of social communication existing between communities and from the maximum use of opening periods. In education, everything must be understood as a space for human growth, including evils and dramas.

Mr. Lira, if he had dedicated 5 minutes of his time, a day, to reading about education and culture, in Brazil and in the world, he would have avoided the present condition of being a fool. Condition is not the essence of the person.

This powerful gentleman, who is haggling over budgets, cannot see the educational-cultural aspect beyond one or another school he knows, which is currently padlocked. From the point of view of citizenship, the main target of the cultural, free, responsible and committed school, all schools permeate the neighborhood and the city, since, via presence or via technologies, which are extensions capable of transforming silence into new social discourses , they could have been – and still are – the voice of science, the voice of history, the voice of art, the voice of hygiene, the voice of health, the voice of social desires.

But nothing would be done without high investment, affection and persuasion, perhaps greater than the percentages of the Federal Constitution. However, this does not justify another nonsense, that is, "flexibility" educational resources in the name of school locks and much less health, whose resources were not spent by the current government as they should have been. According to Agência Senado (12.04.2021, 11:13 am) “Average government spending on a pandemic is 12 times lower in 2021”. It was about comparing with the expenses of 2020, already few.

Mr. Lira's lira de nero has been his verbiage in favor of the indefensible. And that's how he will go down in history, which certainly doesn't impress him because he's now in power. But power is ephemeral and the younger generations (as Hannah Arendt thought in The Education Crisis) will continue to be with us, eager and in need of education and culture in any circumstances. Every school unit, understood as a place of possible citizenship, can be a place of love, welcome, lunch, social communication, health guidance, virtual or face-to-face creation of culture. For that, investments must be heavy, including the immediate regulation of Fundeb, also turning around.

There is something bizarre and uncanny in the midst of horror. Mr. Lira, who makes a strange face of the role played by the Planalto partner, inducing disrespect for hygiene, denying the scientific process, abhorring a time of closure as many countries did and saved lives, now, within the misery cultivated and stimulated, comes with the small talk of cutting education resources. This is the act of arson, which borders on madness for those who study and experience education.

The whole reaction to the Roman fire that comes from the legislative power is expected. It cannot be in education and culture that the cut of a penny falls, under penalty of losing the civilizing focus. However, considering the country's economic and financial movement and its international relations, there is much work to be postponed without violating symbols and fundamental values ​​of Brazilian civilization.

The teaching profession, education and culture have already been hurt too much. Enough! It was seen here how much could have been done with strong investments and was not done. Any justification, now, is nonsense. It is profound ignorance.

Since Pastor Ribeiro has no voice for anything, except perhaps for his preaching, and since Brazilian society is tied to the true panic established by the president of the republic, who governed against the people, cultural education expects much larger budgets to even operate in favor of health, science, rights and love for students, because Sars Cov 2 is not a wave, it is an ecological and environmental disgrace that disputes with us, humans, the game of intelligence, the extended space of the word , time used to the fullest and with care, innovative management, the intense use of all human senses aimed at learning about life and about life in the world.

None of this is done without a deep focus on education. Mister Lira, stop with your verbiage.

*Luiz Roberto Alves is a senior professor at the School of Communications and Arts at USP.

 

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