By LUIZ ROBERTO ALVES*
Milton Ribeiro has a solid set of proposals that citizenship has already presented, such as a social movement, university, research institutions, craft associations and scientific policy
Em The Absolved Tongue, Elias Canetti builds a child-protagonist who has a significant part of his life to get rid of an image, that is, his tongue could be cut out at any moment. All it takes is for an adult, like that brute of his childhood, to catch him in some mischief and he will remain silent forever.
Although the boy lived through the threatened time as an observer and analyst with few words, new collective experiences, adolescent desires and friendly voices led him to absolve the threat, as gratuitous as it was inhumane.
The topic is of great political force. How many projects, policies and processes die in silence, or are exiled in the attic of invisibility and frustration? How many impoverished lives have not been threatened with having their tongues cut out or in fact have been in the interrupted course of their existences? Under a pandemic, languages are lacking to express mourning, poorly expressed in brutal and growing numbers.
All experiences of authoritarianism, colonization and alienation of social groups, and even institutions, have or will one day have this story to tell. That is if at least the language is maintained.
This is not a tour. Here we want to deal with MEC, INEP and CNE, government and state bodies constituted exclusively to guarantee formative paths of childhood, adolescence and youth towards the condition of free, autonomous people, subjects of vita activa aware of their rights and duties in a democratic society. Obviously, such institutions would only exist in dictatorships with their tongue cut out.
The Ministry of Education (the C for culture was also kept for euphony, better than MED or ME) was created on November 14, 1930 and endured many vicissitudes, some dramatic and castrating. The greatest expectation was to see him free and creative in a democratized society, as a place of fulfillment of the constitutional objectives for Brazilian education. Its headquarters in Brasilia has little to do with its obligations towards a vast, unequal and fundamentally unfair country towards the majority of its people, and in it more than 50 million people to be systematically cared for and cultivated, which means education .
The National Council of Education underwent the country's political learning, metamorphosing from 1911, going to 1931, 1961 and 1994-1995. It should be clarified that the CNE has a history of state and non-governmental inclusion, since collaborate with the MEC in important functions (and it does not serve it...), such as carrying out the national hearing on educational topics, building Curricular Guidelines – often shelved –, exchanging with all the organs of the national system in favor of the educational objectives prescribed in the Constitution of the Republic; also, and no less important, to authorize the functioning of institutions, deliberate on disputes in training and management paths and produce regulations. Strictly speaking, the CNE must be the privileged and living language and ear of the Brazilian people in compliance with the articles on education proposed by the constituents of 1988. Anything less than this desideratum will be a threat suggested by Canetti. And the threat exists.
The Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais, which has a heavy and beautiful name on its back, Anísio Teixeira, one of the articulators of the Manifesto of the Pioneers and later a federal advisor, is an autonomous institution, of a technical-political nature and dedicated to research subsidy and formulating policies to achieve the objectives of the MEC and of all educational systems in the country. In recent times, the media and governments have been busy using their language almost exclusively in the ENEM operation. INEP is a place of technical and political excellence for those who know it. It is demanding the amount owed and never knowing about the “orders” from the MEC indirectly, much less through the media.
In an individualistic, authoritarian and unapologetic (mis)government, like the one we have, Canetti succeeds fully. The big lies are made true, supposedly in terms of the mistreated and suffered Gospel of John 8:32 and the “other”, the “other” does not exist, which characterizes a starting point for fascism. There can only be fascisms in the absence of the other and the other as solidarity immanences of the I. It is better understood, therefore, the horror that these people, civilians and military, have for Paulo Freire, who made this attitude the leitmotiv of your educational thinking.
But it is likely that, due to the honor of their position and function, many professionals and collaborators from the MEC, the CNE and INEP do not have the full language to agree that there is a government in the country and potentially genocidal minions, that is, killers of species, whether of the human, fauna and flora, and by various means, including omissions. Also potentially killers of institutions, including the three considered here. Interests and ideologies are in charge of giving convenient answers to those whose language is endangered.
However, there are absolved languages in the country to show the generalized increase in poverty since January 2019, the death of policies dear to life, to the geno/genus/ganá reflected in the world of work, in social security relations, in the biomes of Brazil's rich nature, in health care and in the effective respect for families in view of the graves that will exceed 100 thousand and will stand shoulder to shoulder with Uncle Sam-Trump, the beloved ruler by the captain-president.
Genocide, the murder of groups, parts, sectors, lives, personified in an I that doesn't know the other, the other, goes in a beaten march. Who lives will see. And this disregards, due to lack of importance, the labels of government patronage, dependence and flattery or those who intend to “fix” the government and guarantee its minimum performance. It is worth asking: in favor of whom? This is also a Freirean question.
In education, murder is the cutting of the language reflected in the erasure of the meanings of human language, the engine of the entire educational system. generations, cuts languages-routes and politics remains paralyzed, at most doing maintenance, lubricating the machine, pretending that things are moving forward. No assessment, no transparency, rare manifestations of quality (such as what was read from Capes area coordinators, universities, part of the legislature, sectors of INPE and some social movements). Anyway, silence.
This corporatist reaction by the armed forces to the STF minister's speech was only justified by his discursive generality, which in fact is not suitable, since the whole of an institution must be respected and well analyzed. It would suffice to say, however, as it should be said in education, health, sanitation, culture, etc., that those soldiers who were employed in the government in positions of trust will also have to account for the “cuts of the tongue” and even the murder of part of the people. under misery, carelessness, police violence, bad public example; in short, denial of investments and adequate policies. Thus, the governmental absurdities directly assumed by the former parliamentarian who did nothing for the Brazilian people in many terms, will be projected to his leaders. This old story of separating bodies and positions to find justifications is reminiscent of fascism and Nazism, always associated with the act of “following orders”. Now, before carrying out orders, leave your post. Or does the problem lie in employment and pay?
The strong history of MEC, INEP and CNE passes to the hands of Mr. Ribeiro, the new minister of education. It is, first of all, to be fair, to abstract the information already given about his previous speeches. Perhaps the pastor-minister has already learned something new in his life so as not to be prejudiced nor to stick traditional reformed doctrines in the life of the secular country, constitutionally secular. Which, incidentally, cannot be resolved in a compensatory discourse. And this despite the president's bullshit about the state being secular and he being religious, which he is not, because his bible seems to be the infernal one.
In the 60s, 70s and 80s of the previous century, this columnist was an ecumenical youth leader, a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and St. George's College. Nothing resembling the captain's biblical quotations can be found on this walk, either in the text of the Tanakh, or in the New Testament. The opposite of what he says, yes, with plenty of examples.
If Mr. Ribeiro wants to justify his passage through the MEC, with dignity, it would be convenient to start studying the history of the Ministry, INEP and CNE. Inform society about who appointed and who guaranteed the entry of the last national councilors and whether the appointments were carried out in the strict terms of law 9131, of 1995, including postures and purposes. Continuous act, understand the full meaning of this indispensable advice. Repositioning himself before the country as a statesman and not a pastor. After all, the majorities of this country are not sheep of their fold. Nor the 50 million children, adolescents and young people. Rethink policies and intensely value INEP. Take a leap over what the previous unnamed minister did. To see.
After all, Mr Milton Ribeiro has a solid set of proposals that citizenship has already presented, such as a social movement, university, research institutions, trade associations and scientific policy.
Above all, abandon the idea of a pact, which literature has always considered a dangerous thing, sometimes with the smell of sulfur. It was used in previous governments with poor balance. Being a pact does not matter, but being committed to open documents, debated in educational communities and that meet what is a zero priority: the full appreciation of educators and their others and others, the subject-student and citizen, in terms of all goals of the National Education Plan, 2014, to be urgently rescued, like the SUS, caught by the pandemic in full dismantling. In the PNE and in the CNE Guidelines are found the ruler and the compass for carrying out this process that shapes autonomy, social commitment and freedom. The great challenges of this historic trio go far beyond the three or four circumstantial points that the mainstream media chooses as a priority. This is an old mistake of the supposed Brazilian political culture, which looks with nose pliers foggy.
If none of these values and commitments are of interest to Milton Ribeiro, perhaps consult the captain and drink from his truths. He doesn't know, judging by his words and gestures (also as owner of the Bic) which is an endangered language.
*Luiz Roberto Alves is a senior professor at ECA-USP.
