{"id":397854,"date":"2021-07-19T19:00:19","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T22:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=397854"},"modified":"2021-07-19T19:00:19","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T22:00:19","slug":"education-for-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/education-for-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Education for democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brothers Jos\u00e9 Maur\u00edcio Teixeira and Carlos Ant\u00f4nio Teixeira were amazed to hear their father\u2019s proposition, one afternoon in August 1962. \u201cI\u2019m going to buy each of you a scooter and I\u2019d like you to spend six months traveling the country,\u201d he enthusiastically suggested to his sons, who were medical students at the University of Brazil, now called the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). \u201cWe refused his offer, because we didn\u2019t want to drop out of school,\u201d says Carlos Ant\u00f4nio, now a psychiatrist and retired professor from the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). The episode would be merely anecdotal were it not for one key detail: the father in question was An\u00edsio Teixeira (1900\u20131971), one of Brazil\u2019s top intellectuals in education.<\/p>\n

\u201cContrary to what one might think, he was not strict, nor did he care about our report cards. To find solutions for Brazil\u2019s problems, he believed it was necessary to know it deeply,\u201d says Carlos Ant\u00f4nio. Fifty years after his death, Teixeira\u2019s legacy and relevance are clear, not only in the institutions he helped establish, such as the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES) and the University of Bras\u00edlia (UnB), but also in his ideas, which can be seen in Brazil\u2019s public education system.<\/p>\n

His career has left a mark both in public administration and in education research. \u201cAll his written works were motivated by the desire for social transformation. He was, above all, an educator focused on the practice of education and administration,\u201d said philologist and dictionary writer Ant\u00f4nio Houaiss (1915\u20131999) in a statement to the An\u00edsio Teixeira Virtual Library at UFBA. This trait has been with Teixeira since 1924, when he was inspector-general of Education in Bahia\u2014a position equivalent to that of State Secretary of Education. Based on the writings of American philosopher John Dewey (1859\u20131952), Teixeira proposed an \u201ceducation for life.\u201d The Bahia educator established a program that restructured primary education in Bahia, establishing a model for full-time schools that inspires initiatives to this day.<\/p>\n

Before his job in government, Teixeira was forced to give up his dream of becoming a priest. \u201cHe belonged to a traditional and influential family from Caetit\u00e9, a small town in Bahia. His father, Deocleciano Pires Teixeira (1844\u20131930), was a local doctor and politician. Having a son as a priest was out of the question,\u201d shares engineer Jo\u00e3o Augusto de Lima Rocha, a retired professor from UFBA, who studies the educator\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\"\"

An\u00edsio Teixeira Foundation <\/span><\/a> Visiting the students\u2019 exhibit at the Escola Parque de Salvador, 1952 (second from left to right<\/em>)An\u00edsio Teixeira Foundation <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Teixeira studied in Jesuit Catholic schools and later graduated from the University of Rio de Janeiro Law School. His father immediately got him a \u201cmundane\u201d job. \u201cDeocleciano was close to Bahia governor G\u00f3is Calmon (1874\u20131932), who appointed Teixeira as head of education in the state,\u201d Rocha explains. Fresh out of law school, he even argued that he knew nothing about the topic. In response, Calmon suggested he read the book M\u00e9thodes am\u00e9ricaines d’\u00e9ducation <\/em>(American education methods), by Belgian educationalist Omer Buyse (1865\u20131945), and sent him to Europe so he could learn about the education system in countries like Spain, Italy, and France.<\/p>\n

It was in the United States, however, that Teixeira made a complete turnaround. With Calmon\u2019s approval, he lived there from 1927 to 1929, where he obtained a master\u2019s degree in education from Columbia University in New York. \u201cDuring that time, I studied, visited schools, made good friends, and I believe I learned some things,\u201d he would report in a letter to his father. \u201cI intend to remain in the field of education.\u201d<\/p>\n

During this period, he was taught by Dewey. \u201cThis had a profound impact on Teixeira\u2019s entire career,\u201d claims Darc\u00edsio Natal Muraro, from the Department of Education of the State University of Londrina (UEL). \u201cDewey was the most important name behind the New School movement, which aimed to break with traditional pedagogical models,\u201d says Muraro, an expert in the North American author\u2019s work. The movement proposed a school format based on building knowledge from the child\u2019s experience. \u201cThe goal is to broaden students\u2019 horizons by establishing dialogue with their cultural repertoire, not by imposing content.\u201d<\/p>\n

He linked INEP to CAPES, thus influencing the education system from primary to graduate education, says Muraro<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 1932, Teixeira joined the Movement for Educational Reform in Brazil and signed, alongside 26 other intellectuals, the Manifesto of the Pioneers of Educa\u00e7\u00e3o Nova, authored by educator Fernando de Azevedo (1894\u20131947). The document defended public, compulsory, free, and secular education\u2014precepts that supported the legal instruments that guide Brazilian education, such as the Law of Directives and Bases (LDB). First mentioned in the 1934 Constitution, through Teixeira\u2019s influence, the LDB became law in 1961.<\/p>\n

Its latest version, from 1996, still has traces of the Bahia educator\u2019s thinking, notes pedagogical expert Agueda Bernardete Bittencourt, from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) School of Education. \u201cAccording to the LDB, there should be equal access to schools, diverse pedagogical lines of work, respect for freedom, and free public education\u2014principles that had been defined by Teixeira,\u201d says Bittencourt. He was also against religious teachings in public education. \u201cHis defense of secularism created clashes between himself and certain members of the Catholic Church, who supplied most of the country\u2019s secondary education until the mid-1960s.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1935, when Teixeira took over as head of Public Instruction of the Federal District, in Rio de Janeiro, he established the University of the Federal District (UDF), which boasted innovative teaching methods and brought together both French and Italian teachers. The UDF did not last long; in 1937, it was shut down by President Get\u00falio Vargas\u2019 Estado Novo (1882\u20131954) and Teixeira was persecuted by the regime. \u201cHe bothered members of both the Church and the government for defending democracy as a way of life and evoking the social role of education,\u201d says pedagogical expert Patr\u00edcia Melo Magoga, who studied the concepts of democracy and education in Teixeira\u2019s work for her master\u2019s dissertation, defended at UEL in 2020.<\/p>\n

\"\"

University of Bras\u00edlia \/ Central Collection<\/span><\/a> Teixeira (second from right to left<\/em>) at a UnB meeting with Darcy Ribeiro (first from the right<\/em>)University of Bras\u00edlia \/ Central Collection<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

From 1937 to 1945, Teixeira distanced himself from public life. \u201cHe began to import and sell American cars, explore limestone reserves, and export manganese; he also founded Cimento Aratu [a cement manufacturing company],\u201d shares Carlos Ant\u00f4nio. His business career was interrupted when he was asked to represent Brazil in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), established in 1946. One individual who was key in placing Teixeira at UNESCO was S\u00e3o Paulo writer\u2014and Teixeira\u2019s personal friend\u2014Monteiro Lobato (1882\u20131948), who had worked as a commercial attach\u00e9 in New York.<\/p>\n

He did not stay at UNESCO long, however. \u201cUNESCO lost much of its political strength at the beginning of the Cold War, and that disappointed him,\u201d says Rocha. In 1947, he took the position of head of the Bahia Secretariat of Education and Health and established the Escola Parque in Salvador, which included project-based learning. \u201cChildren and teenagers were encouraged to come up with solutions to local problems, based on tasks that involved research and collaborative work,\u201d explains Magoga. The students would care for the school and participate in sports, cultural, and artistic activities.<\/p>\n

In 1951, Get\u00falio Vargas became president once again\u2014this time, he was democratically elected. With the new democratic times, Teixeira was asked to work for the government, appointed by Ernesto Sim\u00f5es Filho (1886\u20131957), then Minister of Education. His first task was to organize and lead CAPES, which had been established that same year, with the purpose of improving higher education and boosting the training of human resources in the country. His agenda included granting research scholarships to Brazilians interested in pursuing graduate studies abroad. In 1952, in addition to CAPES, Teixeira went on to lead the National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (INEP).<\/p>\n

\u201cTeixeira linked INEP to CAPES, thus influencing the Brazilian educational system from primary education to graduate studies, without disregarding the particularities of Brazilian federalism,\u201d explains Muraro. \u201cWith this, his intention was implementing his belief that education is a right for all and cannot be treated as a privilege for a few.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

An\u00edsio Teixeira Foundation <\/span><\/a> At the Bahia Secretariat of Education and Health, where he worked from 1947 to 1950 (first from the right<\/em>)An\u00edsio Teixeira Foundation <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

From 1955 to 1959, Teixeira was head of the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC), which helped him mobilize the scientific community around the establishment of a new education and research institution. In 1962, UnB was founded in the new federal capital. Anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro (1922\u20131997) defined the principles of the institution; Teixeira planned its pedagogical model; and Oscar Niemeyer (1907\u20132012) designed the buildings.<\/p>\n

The 1964 coup d\u2019\u00e9tat presented a new setback for Teixeira, who had replaced Ribeiro as Chancellor of UnB. Dismissed by the military government, he left for the United States, where he taught at the Columbia University and the University of California. He also spent some time in Chile, where he helped restructure public universities.\u00a0He wrote at least a dozen books on education. In fact, this article is titled after one of them: Educa\u00e7\u00e3o para a democracia<\/em> (Education for democracy) (1936).<\/p>\n

Teixeira returned to Brazil in 1970, to work as a consultant for the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio. On March 11, 1971, he had scheduled a lunch with the philologist Aur\u00e9lio Buarque de Holanda (1910\u20131989) at the latter\u2019s apartment, in the Rio neighborhood of Botafogo. \u201cBefore he could get there, he was found dead in the elevator shaft of the building. Officially, it was deemed an accident. I believe he was ambushed by the military dictatorship,\u201d claims Rocha, who defends the hypothesis in his book Breve hist\u00f3ria da vida e morte de An\u00edsio Teixeira<\/em> (A brief history of the life and death of An\u00edsio Teixeira; Edufba, 2019).<\/p>\n

Carlos Ant\u00f4nio disagrees: \u201cI still believe his death was accidental.\u201d One of Teixeira\u2019s four sons prefers to remember his father as a simple man: \u201cHe liked to drink cacha\u00e7a before lunch on Sundays and watch soccer matches on TV,\u201d he recalls. \u201cHe used to say that things will only move forward in this country when we begin discussing education as seriously as we discuss soccer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An\u00edsio Teixeira\u2019s work is the basis for the defense of public, free, and secular education in Brazil","protected":false},"author":421,"featured_media":400831,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[226,241,256],"coauthors":[740],"class_list":["post-397854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-retrospect","tag-education","tag-history","tag-public-policies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/421"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397854"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401267,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397854\/revisions\/401267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397854"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=397854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}