Education in Portugal: the right to indignation
“[…] in addition to material well-being (of its project) socialism implies an autonomous participation of workers in general and sectoral decisions, in conducting the policy of the final country: not only following orders, therefore, […]. This is only possible with “that minimum of cultural preparation (we are not afraid of the word for the demagoguery of the moment) that allows the […] debate and above all the critical spirit that is part of it and its consistent use. Being an explorer determines a just attitude of protest and a more than explainable desire to intervene […]”
Mario Dionisio, What? Teacher?! Casa da Achada, Lx, 2015, p.190.
Paulo Freire (1921-1997), in The Pedagogy of Indignation (Unesp, SP, 2000) states: educating for a permanent interrogation of the powers that alienate us, this is one of the noble functions of teaching. When the global education system has as its sole ideology the project of unbridled competition, of a fratricidal race for the already depleted energies of the planet, and of the Other, more than ever, being a teacher is synonymous with a multiplier of culture. Or so it should be. Today we experience an education devoid of meaning because greed, the feeling of ownership, profit and the god of money are the only mainstays of contemporary being. Digitization only gave strength to the progressive dismantling of the educational system, involving the teacher in a mere manager of didactic units and a simple task of orders issued from above. We don’t want professors who read, who have time to read and think — what we want is uncritical people, appeased by the most demeaning technicalities. Online tutoring, that’s what’s on the horizon… Cheaper, easier and maybe millions saved, judged.
Without spirit and without mission, because that spirit was stolen from us, and without mission, because they diluted the memory of the School as a place of Knowledge, no tiny oasis of culture can thrive in the Portuguese School and University. A factory of stupidity, of hypocrisy masked by scientific rigor, that’s what we have. Without freedom and without an imaginative projection of another future that tears the straitjacket of poverty, disinterest and banality, there is no future Portugal. A juggernaut of absurd goals that only aim to make new students slaves to the world of work, the School said no, with the January 14 demonstration, to the instrumental view of teaching and learning. A School without imagination, without memory and without culture, that is what we have almost 50 years after the 25th of April. How to explain this?
Some facts: The bureaucratic crush that we, teachers, have been the target, as well as the low combats that characterize, across the board, the recognition of successive governments to a professional class responsible for the training of your children and young people, this is a first explanation. Since the teaching of Maria de Lurdes Rodrigues, the teacher has been transformed into a mere technician and schools into mere places where parents leave their children to go to work, accompanying them at the end of the day. Saber? Know, in fact? It doesn’t matter at all.
Since the teaching of Maria de Lurdes Rodrigues, the teacher has been transformed into a mere technician and schools into mere places where parents leave their children to go to work, accompanying them at the end of the day. Saber? Know, in fact? It doesn’t matter at all
More: The freezing of intervals and the fair progression in the career, as well as the system of placements, are problems that ensure that the best ones do not want to be teachers. According to PORDATA, only 3% of young graduates are, in 2023, interested in following the teaching path. In 1996, there were around 14% of young graduates following vocational training. It adds the deficient training of teachers, the end of remunerated earnings, the end of training in teaching where one thinks, with critical, pertinent bibliography, the role of the teacher in today’s society. I would like to ask: What have the reforms been if not the impoverishment of the programs, the facilitation of learning?
We, teachers, whether in Public Schools or Universities, feel watched in our pedagogical action, as we live, with no escape, between the pidesco director, the bureaucratic network and parents fanaticized by the deification of their children. Parents – let it be said frankly – who never think that their children are being deceived by a system that allows them to transition between years and cycles without them, the children, being competent in the areas they choose to follow. There are certainly recognized, but isn’t this the general reality? Who can deny? It is, therefore, urgent to require curricula, qualified programs for the competitiveness of the global world: disciplines that arouse thought, consolidate curiosity! However, what discourse exists, on the part of the ME, regarding the power and respect that should be given to the teaching class so that cases of violence against teachers are not democratized to the point of the most absolute anarchy? For when will a minister who does not endear children and adolescents and parents, infantilizing and lying, at the same time that he demonizes those who form and educate?
Teachers are indignant against the hollow ideology of the last 25 years, which has resulted in the impoverishment of our collective life. Today, we are all victims of a tentacular apparatus of media stupidity that has imposed superficiality and appearance as the prerogative of what is cool and modern. Classes today are made up of teenagers and young adults (but there are more and more children with this profile) for whom the teacher is a figure of ridicule and ridicule. Children of hip-hop, of the brutalization of contemporary life, without language and having as their only training what the media offers, what gives them importance, in fact, to school? What is the value of taking a higher education course in this country when you know, in advance, that you want to study or not, everyone will go to the University and produce a (so-called) “superior” course? What idea of merit are we passing on to younger people?
One does not ask, who governs us, what is this Portugal of which the school is the mirror? It is the country of football heroes, commentators with open shirts, so-called “senators” who nobody understands why they are opinion makers, always polluted by the hollow ideology of the parties they represent. A country that, from Gouchas and Cristina, to the stars of music hall in Portugal, has to ask: Who is benefiting from this? We, teachers, the country’s highest education agents, must also take these issues to the public square and promote a profound debate! Thinking about education means thinking about culture as a whole, and, as a whole, without embarrassment, recognizing that educating is only possible with teachers, parents and rulers who are critical of alienation, the other face of totalitarian regimes.
I remember, on this occasion, Mário Soares: “The Portuguese have the right to be indignant”. Acting and fighting critically – because thinking about education in some aspects that I have listed here – this has to legitimize the strength of our demands. It is because in this country there is a democracy to defend and without dignified teachers, without a career that attracts the best, Portugal is condemned to be that country at the corner of Europe, and of the Planet, as António Nobre wrote.
Teacher