Darcy Ribeiro, history of Rio De Janeiro education, Brazilian educational thought, I special education program (I PEE).

Entre la utopía y la acción: el I programa de ducación especial (I PEE) en el estado de Río De Janeiro

Entre utopie et action : le I programme d’éducation spéciale (I PEE) dans l’état de Rio De Janeiro

Abstract

Our reflections result from studies conducted since the last decade on Darcy Ribeiro's educational projects as a politician and manager of educational initiatives. Through these studies, we seek to situate, analyze, and interpret the “makings” of Darcy's political and educational thought. By inventorying his production, his relationship with Anísio Teixeira, and his implemented projects, we focus on one of his main experiences in the educational field: the I Special Education Program (I PEE), a guiding document that defined the conception and actions from the cultural educational field of Leonel de Moura Brizola, the Rio de Janeiro governor elected in 1983. We moved along Darcy Ribeiro's journey, punctuating the construction of one of the most significant and considerable educational proposals carried out in Brazil, which widened Darcy Ribeiro's contribution to the history of education in Rio de Janeiro.

Keywords:
Darcy Ribeiro; History of Rio de Janeiro Education; Brazilian educational thought; I Special Education Program (I PEE)

Resumen

Las reflexiones que se presentan a continuación son resultado de estudios que se han realizado, desde la última década, sobre los proyectos educativos llevados a cabo por Darcy Ribeiro en su carrera como político y gestor de logros educativos. A través de dichos estudios buscamos situar, analizar e interpretar las acciones del pensamiento político y educativo de Darcyn. De esta manera, al inventariar su producción, su relación con Anísio Teixeira y sus proyectos implementados, pretendimos una de sus principales experiencias en el campo educativo: el I Programa de Educación Especial (I PEE), documento orientador que definió la concepción y acciones. del campo educativo cultural del gobernador electo en 1983, en el estado de Río de Janeiro, el gaucho y peatón, Leonel de Moura Brizola. Avanzamos en el camino de Darcy Ribeiro, puntuando la construcción de una de las propuestas educativas más grandes e intensas realizadas en Brasil, que de esta manera proporcionó una ampliación del aporte de Darcy Ribeiro a la historia de la educación en Río de Janeiro.

Palabras clave:
Darcy Ribeiro; Historia de la Educación de Río de Janeiro; pensamiento educativo brasileño; I Programa de Educación Especial (I PEE)

Résumé

Les réflexions présentées ci-dessous résultent d'études menées, depuis la dernière décennie, sur les projets éducatifs réalisés par Darcy Ribeiro au cours de sa carrière d'homme politique et de gestionnaire de acquis éducatifs. À travers de telles études, nous cherchons à situer, analyser et interpréter les actions de la pensée politique et éducative de Darcyn. Ainsi, en inventoriant sa production, sa relation avec Anísio Teixeira et ses projets mis en œuvre, nous avons entendu l'une de ses principales expériences dans le domaine éducatif : le I Programme d'Éducation Spéciale (I PEE), un document directeur qui définissait la conception et les actions. Du domaine éducatif culturel du gouverneur élu en 1983, dans l'État de Rio de Janeiro, le gaucho et piéton, Leonel de Moura Brizola. Nous avons suivi le parcours de Darcy Ribeiro, ponctuant la construction d'une des propositions éducatives les plus vastes et les plus intenses réalisées au Brésil, qui a ainsi permis d'élargir la contribution de Darcy Ribeiro à l'histoire de l'éducation à Rio de Janeiro.

Mots-clés:
Darcy Ribeiro; Histoire de l'éducation à Rio de Janeiro; pensée éducative brésilienne; I Programme d'éducation spéciale (I PEE)

Resumo

As reflexões apresentadas a seguir resultam de estudos que vem sendo realizados, desde a última década, sobre os projetos educativos concretizados por Darcy Ribeiro em sua trajetória de político e gestor de realizações educacionais. Através de tais estudos, procuramos situar, analisar e interpretar os fazimentos do pensamento político e educacional darcyniano. Desta forma, ao inventariar a sua produção, a sua relação com Anísio Teixeira e seus projetos implementados, tencionamos uma das suas principais experiências no campo educacional: o I Programa Especial de Educação (I PEE), documento orientador que definiu a concepção e as ações do campo educativo cultural do governador eleito em 1983, no estado do Rio de Janeiro, o gaúcho e pedetista, Leonel de Moura Brizola. Nos movimentamos pelo percurso de Darcy Ribeiro pontuando a construção de uma das maiores e mais intensas propostas educativas realizadas no Brasil, o que deste modo, propiciou um alargamento da contribuição de Darcy Ribeiro para a história da educação fluminense.

Palavras-chave:
Darcy Ribeiro; História da Educação fluminense; pensamento educacional brasileiro; I Programa Especial de Educação (I PEE)

It is time to open our eyes to our reality. It is time to rewrite Brazil so that poor people have a chance. When every Brazilian can eat every day, when every child can graduate middle school, when every man and woman can have a stable job in which they can progress, the most beautiful civilization in the world will be built here. It is so easy; looking beyond time, I fell on the tip of my fingers, this little utopia of ours coming to fruition. (Darcy Ribeiro)

Public school is the most significant world invention. It allows everyone to inherit the basis of the most important world heritage: culture. (Darcy Ribeiro, 1997)

Darcy Ribeiro (1922-1997) started his academic trajectory at the Medicine School (1939). However, with no vocation for a medical career, he dropped out in 1943 and started the School of Sociology and Politics in São Paulo, graduating in 1946. In 1947, he joined the Serviço de Proteção ao Índio (SPI- Indigenous Protection Service), getting in contact with Marshal Cândido Mariano Rondon, then president of the National Council of Indigenous Protection. In the following years, his ethnological studies led him to live for long periods among Indigenous communities.

With Juscelino Kubitschek’s election as president in October 1955, Darcy Ribeiro was invited to help create the educational sector guidelines in the new government, working with the educator Anísio Teixeira. After leaving the direction of the SPI study section, he became a professor at the Faculdade Nacional de Filosofia (FNFI- National Philosophy School) from Universidade do Brasil.

Through Anísio Teixeira's indication, in 1957, he ran the social studies division of the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Educacionais (CBPE- Brazilian Center of Educational Studies), connected to the Education Ministry. In 1959, Darcy planned the Universidade de Brasília (UnB). After, in 1961, with UnB's inauguration, he was named its first president. In August 1962, he assumed the Ministry of Education and Culture, substituted by Anísio Teixeira at the university’s presidency.

In January 1963, when the country returned to the presidential regime, he left the Ministry to run the Presidency Civilian Office. In our studies, we aim to identify the relation of the national political process with the trajectories of these two educators since the Escola Nova¹ Movement of the education pioneers.

A new education system was structured during the first Vargas government (1930-45). The pioneers' fight played a relevant role in defending a national education system. After 1930, it became a space to dispute the guidelines to redefine the country’s educational pathways.

The renovators had their proposals defeated. The period post-1935, the start of the authoritarianism, formally manifested in the Estado Novo (1937-45), directly affected Anísio Teixeira. After the communist uprising in November and the arrest of Rio de Janeiro's mayor, Pedro Ernesto, accused of being involved with the Aliança Nacional Libertadora (ANL- National Freeing Alliance), Anísio was removed from the role of general-secretary of Education and Culture at the Federal Capital.

On the other hand, the pioneers were at the center of the debate with proposals created since the 1920s, publicly expressed in the Manifesto dos Pioneiros da Educação Nova²(1932). The document written by Fernando de Azevedo, signed by 26 Brazilian educators from the “national renovation” movement, defended with civic fervor the public, free, lay, and universal school.

At the same time, considering the Campaign to Defend the Public School, triggered in the late 1950s, a “new edition” of the Manifesto came to light in 1959. Unlike 1932, the "Manifesto de 1959” was unconcerned with didactic-pedagogical issues. It admitted as valid the 1932 guidelines and focused on the general issues of educational policies. The main guidelines determined that public education should be compulsory and free, considering the republican spirit. It pointed out the possibility of more conscious participation with broader bases, affirming the social aspect of education, when calling on the State to assume its duties to maintain the school system and to build the national identity.

According to Simon Schwartzman (1984):

The movement of Escola Nova, not a wholly defined project, structured itself around some prominent themes and names. Public, universal, and free schools continued as the great motto. Education should be offered to everyone, and everyone should receive the same type of education. This education would, naturally, be lay. Ultimately, its primary role was to form a free and conscious citizen who could incorporate himself into the great National State that Brazil was becoming without the tutelage of work corporations or any sectarian organizations. (p.53)

It is also important to point out that one of the groups defending the public school was led by Anísio Teixeira, inspired by John Dewey’³s pragmatic liberal philosophy. The Escola Nova movement directly involves Darcy Ribeiro, transforming him into one of its most prominent heirs. The anthropologist fought for the renovating motto until the end of his life in February 1997.

Bomeny (2003) highlights the affinity between Anísio and Darcy in favor of a public school for all is highlighted: "Darcy leaves in his memoirs and correspondences the affinity with the educator and philosopher Anísio Teixeira, the program of education democratization, and the ideals of Escola Nova" (p.11).

In this context of defending public, lay, universal, republican, and free schools, it is important to stress that Anísio’s name was associated with the ideals of the Escola Nova⁴ Movement in Brazil and with the higher education institutions, such as the Universidade do Distrito Federal (1935-39), the Campanha Nacional de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Capes- National Campaign for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel), in 1951, the direction of Instituto Nacional de Estudos Pedagógicos (Inep- National Institution of Pedagogical Studies) and, in 1955, the creation of Centro Brasileiro de Estudos Educacionais (CBPE- Brazilian Center of Educational Studies). He was also one of the leading creators of Universidade de Brasília (UnB) in 1961.

In this scenario, there is pressure to expand the educational system. According to Bomeny (2003):

The post-war democratizing context legitimizes the demand for educational benefits to larger population segments. The strictly pragmatic meaning given to education as workforce qualification is expanded into a political dimension of greater access of the underprivileged population to the public benefits guaranteed in a well-fare State. (p.35)

However, in the 1950s-1960s, the demand for political and social participation increased and opened spaces to think of a national education project. According to the historian Eric Hobsbawm's (1995) studies, after World War II, the capitalist system tried conciliating economic liberalism with sociodemocracy political precepts.

To a great extent, the idealization of these new times emerges from the development of the industrialization field. In this period, the belief in the possibility of the country's progressive development is enabled, involving several segments, such as culture and education and the political and economic fields. Thus, through education, political participation showed itself as a hopeful pathway.

When considering the world and national context of “concrete” possibilities, Darcy deepens Anísio’s theoretical question to forge the intellectual of "making." Darcy's words show this strong influence: "If someone asked me about the most important meeting in my life, I'd say it was our meeting ."

Darcy's praxis confirms the statement. An advocate of social causes and convinced that the role of the intellectual implies a direct action in the social body, Darcy Ribeiro used the social content and his militant fervor to develop projects and programs, which the pioneer defended since the 1920s.

The meeting of these two personalities was possible through the reforming passion that excited them and their affinity in the defense of public education. This alliance was consolidated in the movement to defend public schools and the creation of the new Law of Guidelines and Bases for National Education, only sanctioned in 1961 after a long period in the National Congress (1948-61).

Once more, the legislation text reinforces that Anísio Teixeira’s influence on Darcy Ribeiro’s worldview is undeniable, as can be seen in his own words (1984):

I learned with the master Anísio Teixeira - and under hardships, I try to follow this precept - that the commitment of the thinking man is to seek the truth. Those who are committed to their ideas and cling to them, closed to innovation, have nothing to receive or to give. They are repeaters. One can only give a contribution if he is open to debate. (p.3)

When reviewing their trajectory, we can affirm that Darcy followed a public agenda guided by Anísio Teixeira: “You cannot imagine how much I own you and how I am aware that, in education, I did nothing more than placing my agitation dynamo, buzzing around your ideas” (Bomeny, 2003, p. 72).

On the other hand, Darcy's perspective on Republican public education presupposes other aspects regarding the basis of the democratic development of the nation. His discourse that "education is an instrument of revolution" has the construction of national self-knowledge as a core idea. Hence, pointing out a central concern on the reorganization of the Brazilian state, seeking its national idea, when denouncing the domination system still lingering in our country. Thus, his reform concerned building education through the project of a nation that allowed the full exercise of citizenship, bathed in our Black and Indigenous roots.

Anísio Teixeira, a determinant intellectual in Darcy's educational conception, was a prominent defender of Brazilian public schools and the Escola Nova movement. He directly influenced Darcy Ribeiro and transformed him into one of his most decisive intellectual heirs, defending public education until the end of his life. Bomeny (2003) highlights the affinity between Anísio and Darcy for the renovating ideals:

Darcy leaves in his memoirs and correspondences the confessions of affinity with the educator and philosopher Anísio Teixeira, the education democratization program, and Escola Nova's ideals (p.11).

Therefore, when considering the world and national context of “concrete” possibilities, Darcy deepens Anísio’s theoretical question to forge the intellectual of the “makings” (in Portuguese: fazimento). In Darcy’s words: “If someone asked me about the most important meeting in my life, I would say it was ours." Darcy's trajectory confirms this statement. A defender of social causes and convinced that the intellectual’s role implies a direct action in the social body, Darcy Ribeiro would take to Anísio Teixeira the social content and the militant fervor to develop projects and programs that the pioneer kept on the agenda since the 1920s (FARIA; SOUZA, 2008).

For these two intellectuals, public school was essential to society. Darcy Ribeiro affirmed that public school is the most significant world invention because it allows all men to become heirs of the basis of the most important world heritage, which is culture (Bomeny, 2003, p. 76). Therefore, we observe that the affinity between these two personalities was possible to defend Brazilian public education.

Nowadays, the importance of education in the development and democratization process of the country is evident. For this, we must highlight Anísio's and Darcy's contributions in defending their life-long commitment to public school. Therefore, studying their educational thought is always fruitful, bringing elements to problematize questions still open in the trajectory of Brazilian history of education, such as the right to education and the social nature of education offered in public schools.

Analyzing both excerpts, we can see the concern with the child at the elementary and middle levels (ensino fundamental) who should receive a complete formation based on intellectual, professional, physical, and health activities, besides ethical-philosophical values (formation of habits and attitudes, cultivation of aspirations).

This integral formation defended by Anísio Teixeira has as one of its pillars the formation for progress, the development of technical and industrial civilization, political-developmental aspects, and a vital assumption of liberal thought/action. In this sense, children’s complete formation- through education - would target the construction of a civilized adult, ready to face the job market and its challenges.

In Brazil, in the 1950s, under Anísio Teixeira's orders, we see the first attempts to implement a public system of full-time schools embodied in a complete formation. However, the experience did not multiply. Similarly to the CIEPs’ proposal, in the state of Rio de Janeiro in the 1980s and 1990s, and the Centros de Atenção Integral à Criança (CAICs- Centers for the Integral Attention of Children) at a national level during the same period, they did not continue as a viable option, in a more consistent and lasting shape.

Our studies point out Anísio Teixeira’s concept when creating the Centro Educacional Carneiro Ribeiro (Educational Center Carneiro Ribeiro): it was insufficient to provide school access, to reach an education project aiming for scientific and technological development, there was a need to form for work and society. For this to happen, schools should work full-time with a formation that enables this project (COELHO, 2009).

When we consider Anísio Teixeira's and Darcy Ribeiro's projects, we see that their proposals were, at the same time, similar and different. Similar because they offered activities distinct from those traditionally understood as part of a formal education. Different when attempting to integrate what we call school and other activities in the same space of formal learning, which had three blocks. In the main block, with three floors:

(...) the classrooms, a medical center, a kitchen, and a cafeteria, besides the support and recreation areas. We find an indoor gym in the second block with a volleyball/basketball/indoor soccer court, bleachers, and lockers. This gym was called Salão Polivalente (Multiuse room) because it is also used for theater presentations, music concerts, parties, etc. On the third block, in an octagonal shape, there is the library and, above them, the accommodation for resident students (RIBEIRO, 1986, p. 42)

In the excerpt, we can see that, while Anísio Teixeira thought a bi-parted school space - school-classes and school-park - to aggregate the activities that composed its concept of complete formation, in the CIEPs, Darcy Ribeiro sought to merge them into the same space. This situation would promote greater integration of the educational activities developed by the school, understanding all of them as curriculum components inherent to this formation of students in the school space (FARIA; SOUZA, 2008).

According to Nunes (2009), conceived by Anísio Teixeira, the first popular education center in Brazil was created by a state government, supported by the federal government, through the Centro Regional de Pesquisas Educacionais da Bahia (Bahia Regional Center of Educational Studies), connected to the Instituto Nacional de Estudos Pedagógicos (Inep- National Institute of Educational Studies). The conception of Centro Educacional Carneiro Ribeiro was also on the organizational base of the Brasília school system, designed by Anísio Teixeira, which was part of his proposal for the federal government’s education guiding plan for the whole country. Since the 1950s, when the Centro Educacional Carneiro Ribeiro emerged at Liberdade, one of the poorest areas of Salvador, other popular education projects appeared and proliferated in Brazil (NUNES, 2009).

Primary schools should offer students diverse opportunities, understanding study, work, sociability, art, and recreation activities. Thus, there is a need for a new curriculum, a new program, and a new teacher. Therefore, the point was to expand, from the cultural point of view, the primary instruction - then mainly characterized as a literacy school - so that the population, mainly from the poorest areas, could be part of modern society (NUNES, 2009).

Octávio Mangabeira, the governor at the time, named the Centro de Educação Popular as Centro Educacional Carneiro Ribeiro to honor the educator from Bahia who distinguished himself in the formation of prestigious Brazilian intellectuals, such as Ruy Barbosa and Euclides da Cunha. Curiously, it earned the nickname Escola-Parque (School-Park) as it became known -because, in the assembly of school buildings that established the Center, the Escola Parque stood out architecturally and pedagogically.

According to Xavier (2000), during our republican history, several national reconstruction projects disputed their legitimacy in the state of Rio de Janeiro. For Faria (2008), Anísio Teixeira and Darcy Ribeiro were two educators who had effective participation in the movement in the defense of public education, which preceded the advent of the first Law of Guidelines and Bases for National Education, sanctioned in 1961.

Both educators materialized their ideas through their intellectual productions and work in public positions. When creating the Universidade do Distrito Federal (UDF), Anísio Teixeira provoked a reaction from more conservative intellectuals. As the person responsible for planning the Universidade de Brasília (UnB) in 1959, Darcy Ribeiro emphasized the need to transform education through a public commitment that guaranteed everyone the right to education.

The master’s influence

According to Faria (2008), Darcy always referred to Anísio as "my master," as can be seen in his letter from March 28, 1966, to Anísio Teixeira:

(…) I answer to this and the perplexity that could go down with the belief that it is up to us, the intellectuals of the poor brown people, to make ourselves the salt of the land. Having specific tasks of fighting against backwardness and the misery that warmed us for decades, we, the disinherited and the ones being discriminated against, who have no bombs, have a moral authority of decisive importance in this world undergoing a value crisis. (...) why don't you write an ecumenical recrimination letter? Speak to the Yankees in the name of W. James, of Dewey. (...) Tell them as the brown man from the São Francisco backlands, the last bastion of romanity (ACERVO FUNDAR).

Thus, Darcy Ribeiro appeared to be outraged with the directions of the world organization in the economic, political, social, cultural, and, mainly, educational plans. When discussing Darcy Ribeiro’s education conception, we see the influences that establish it and its possible impacts in building the I PEE. To do so, we highlight that Anísio Teixeira's figure was undoubtedly the main mark of Darcy's educational thought.

Anísio Teixeira and Darcy Ribeiro idealized and implemented two proposals that significantly marked the Brazilian History of Education: Anísio in the 1950s, with his Escola-Parque (School-Park) in Bahia, and Darcy more than 30 years later, in the 1980s in the state of Rio de Janeiro with the Centros Integrados de Educação Integral (CIEPs- Fulltime Education Integrated Centers). Both thought and constructed republican full-time schools, aiming for students' integral education and proposing the universalization of access and the right to education with a social quality.

As Xavier pointed out, Darcy later understood the importance of the graduate program:

Above all, I learned that the main product of a scientific study is not the dissertation nor the thesis - and not even the article or the book that contributes to broadening the knowledge - but form capable people to use the scientific method. People can only be prepared there, where there is research, and where the researcher is concerned with educational tasks. (RIBEIRO apud XAVIER, 1999, p. 236)

Darcy was presented to Anísio through a common friend, Charles Wagley⁵, who worked with Anísio at the Instituto Nacional de Estudos Pedagógicos (INEP), where the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Educacionais (CBPE) was being created. They met at Darcy’s lecture about the social life of the Indigenous Ramkokamekra (RIBEIRO, 1997). According to his Confissões (Ribeiro, 1997), it was during this intellectual meeting that a great affinity emerged.

Darcy Ribeiro was born in 1922, in Montes Claros, in Minas Gerais countryside. He lost his father when he was three years old and was raised by his mother, Fininha, an adult literacy teacher. In his autobiography, Darcy says that the act of educating touched him when helping his mother's students: Sometimes, I helped the recently-arrived, holding their hands with a pencil to tame it so that they could learn how to write (RIBEIRO, 1997, p. 31).

When Darcy remembers his high school period, he described it as not very significant, reaching the university in Belo Horizonte with an "astonishing innocence" due to his ignorance towards the world. After, he joined the Medicine degree under the influence of his mother and an uncle, a doctor and, in his eyes, the city's most intelligent and respected man. He continued his studies in Medicine until he discovered he could attend subjects in other schools. He fell in love with the subjects of sociology, law, philosophy, literature, and history, among others. Thus failing his medical studies for three years in a row. After these failures, Darcy received an invitation to study in São Paulo. Upon discussion with his family, he took brief vacations and decided to enter the sociology degree in 1942 (RIBEIRO, 1997).

During this period, he received a scholarship grant to help one of his professors write a critical bibliography of Brazilian literature. Some essays had a sociological interest. This way, he intensified his literary readings to be able to classify the books. He could deepen his knowledge of the Brazilian people and culture during this work. To Darcy, this literature gave him more theoretical grounding than his whole course: that bibliography pulled me to the insides of Brazil and Brazilianities, giving me a concrete matter to make me think of ourselves as a people and history (RIBEIRO, 1997; p.125).

After his graduation in sociology, he was hired as an ethnologist of the Seção de Estudos do Serviço de Proteção aos Índios (Study Section of Indigenous Protection Service). Then, he started his life as an Indigenist, another phase that would deeply mark him. The first group he observed was the kadiwéu, who lived in Mato Grosso. Later, Darcy created the Museu do Índio in the state of Rio de Janeiro. This museum received the first graduate course in Anthropology in Brazil. Many of the ideas used by Darcy in education originated in those observations about the behavior and traditions of the Indigenous groups. Nonetheless, he only started to be interested and actively work for education after meeting Anísio Teixeira, so the causes defended by

Anísio also became his.

Darcy first acted in education during the construction process of the first Law of Directives and Bases for Nacional Education (LDBEN, 1961), working intensively to create UnB. Nonetheless, the satisfaction of seeing UnB working lasted for a short time because the Military Coup in 1964 destroyed his original project. As many intellectuals and politicians opposed the regime, Darcy left Brazil and went into exile. Darcy stayed in exile for some years, working in Latin America developing higher education projects in several countries, such as Uruguai, Chile, and Peru.

A utopia (re) construction

I suppose and propose to you as an explanation that we are faced with a serious case of intrinsic deficiency in Brazilian society. The inability to educate the population and feed it is due to the character of the national society [...] an inequality disease, a disease that neglects its population. This is why, from the perspective of our ruling classes, old and modern, people are the lowest of the low. Its destiny and aspirations do not interest them because people, the ordinary people, the workers, will never be considered when deliberating, just as a workforce to be worn out during production (RIBEIRO, 1984, p. 43).

When returning to the country, Darcy Ribeiro was elected vice-governor, with Leonel Brizola, in the elections for the state of Rio de Janeiro, in 1982. Education improvement was a central point in their campaign proposal. He implemented his ideas by creating the I Programa Especial de Educação (I PEE- Education Special Program).

In his words:

(...) large full-time schools, each of them for one thousand students. For the first time in Brazil, they crystallized, as a public network, what is the public education in the civilized world that does not know the shift schools but only full-time schools for students and teachers. They fill the necessary conditions, indispensable for children from poor families with no previous schooling to progress in their studies and complete middle school. Guaranteeing this to all children is the only way to integrate Brazil into the educated civilization, dissolving the enormous marginalized masses of illiterate Brazilians (Ribeiro, 1997:476).

Thus, Darcy tried to materialize the ideal of full-time school, which Anísio Teixeira tried to implement for more than half a century in Rio de Janeiro, Bahia e Brasília, with no continuity in the subsequent administrations. In a way, Darcy⁶ revived in the 1980s and 1990s the intolerance that Anísio’s opponents did for his challenge to create a public, lay, and democratic school as a fundamental condition to consolidate democracy.

In this sense, for Bomeny (2009), Darcy Ribeiro defended the CIEPs as a regular public school, similar to those in the countries that believed in the right to education for most of the population. What was attempted here was a fact in the countries that already had universalized public school access. Darcy affirmed that the examples were not only the developed nations. There were also countries in Latin America with the concept of full-time education as the standard for the early school years.

To Darcy Ribeiro, Brazilian public school could not be considered a genuinely republican institution because it was highly elitist and unprepared to receive social groups that continued without access to material and cultural goods. This school - the result of a "Pedagogia vadia”, ignored the direct interferences of these deficiencies in the school performance of the poorest ones, demanding from the poor child the same performance as the rich one.

Still, according to Bomeny (2009), Darcy Ribeiro pointed out two important milestones in the defense of Brizola’s government project: the program targeted children and full-time school should be an answer to what he considered the calamity of Brazilian school.

Darcy converged to Anísio Teixeira’s ideas (1968):

(...) we lacked the vigor to expand the school in its time, when the patterns were still good or reasonable, and the historical process had not yet suffered the impacts of acceleration of our current days. A persistent and visceral feeling of dual society, of rulers and ruled, stopped us from realizing the urgency of expanding the education of the people. It seemed that the education of the elites would suffice (p.61).

Therefore, identifying Brazil as a country led by an elite little committed to the people, Darcy points out the historical exclusion process experienced by the Brazilian people, which, grounded on the three-race myth, systematically excluded the majority of the population from the decisions about the country’s future. It is imputed to the poorest, a political, decision-making, and intellectual incapacity, removing from a majority of Brazilians the possibility of transforming their reality. To Darcy, the position of CIEPs' opponents could indicate that his diagnosis was accurate.

Hence, we can see that the I Programa Especial de Educação (PEE- 1^st Special Education Program) aimed to guarantee to the population its democratic right to access a free education with social quality and adapted to the transformations experienced in that historical context. We should also point out that before becoming a vice-governor in Rio de Janeiro and implementing I PEE, Darcy Ribeiro came from a prominent path in the education area and had already held public positions, aiming to contribute to the fight to access public education in Brazil, allowing a more significant socio-educational insertion of traditionally excluded segments (STOCK, 2004).

In parallel, in that re-democratization period, Rio de Janeiro's political conjecture allowed the rise to power of a traditionally left-wing leadership in the state. However, contrary to expectations, progressive sectors sought to hinder the implementation of the Programa Especial de Educação, emerging a combat that will continue in Rio de Janeiro history of education at the time. So, we see educational projects in dispute and, beyond a common and traditional division between right and left, there is also an intense battle within the left, which feeds the conservative reactions that combated the project of CIEPs and use it for their cause (FARIA, 2011).

Final remarks

[...] wouldn't the public school form a lucid citizenship, a body of modern work, the greatest inventions? One of my pains is the indifference of Brazil's rulers to education. The idiots do not know that, without teaching children how to read and write, Brazil will not work. Or do they not care because they want to leave Brazil as it is because it is more profitable for them? (RIBEIRO, 1997, p. 34).

Though I PEE was much more comprehensive than CIEPs, it ended up being exclusively identified with this project, reducing its dimension to society and the school community. Although the I Programa Especial de Educação and the CIEPs projects were formulated within a specific political context, it is very relevant to investigate its marks and impacts on Rio de Janeiro education in the period to contextualize the pathways that the education system (municipal and state) after the end of Brizola’s governments. Therefore, remembering such a historical moment points out the political contradictions still present in the public education systems.

At the same time, the representations around political figures, such as Darcy Ribeiro and Leonel Brizola, provoked, by the style and passion implied in their actions, a substantial ensemble of criticisms from their adversaries, added to the degradation of the school system, the increase of urban violence, and the supposedly "political-electoral" intentions (BOMENY, 2008).

Such a panorama strongly influences the relationships between Rio de Janeiro society and the Brizola administration. Darcy Ribeiro and Brizola brought solid political marks from the situations previously experienced. We can point out Cadeia da Legalidade; the Brizoletas; and the Rio Grande do Sul state government in Brizola’s trajectory. Furthermore, we cite Darcy's public policies favoring Indigenous, the Ministry of Education in João Goulart’s government, and the UNB creation. Both public men acted in key situations in Brazilian history, firmly committed to the ideas of public education universalization.

Thus, one of the hypotheses raised in our study is that such marks largely fomented the educational thought that will build the I PEE. The merge of these men's social and political beliefs ruled the guiding principles of the educational program implemented in that period. On the one hand, we can see the influence of workers’ ideals that formed the engineer and politician Brizola. On the other, the issue that presents itself is the centrality of a school with social and cultural quality. Hence, the two strands forge a project characterized by a group of ideas that aimed to instrumentalize educators to face the competitive job market, widen access to cultural goods, and allow the construction and expansion of a critical capacity regarding Brazilian society.

References

• BOMENY, Helena. Salvar pela escola: Programa especial de educação. In: Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas, n.º 55, 2007, pp. 41-67
• COELHO, L. M. C. C. História (s) da educação integral. Em aberto, Brasília, v.22, n.80, p.83-96, abr 2009.
• FARIA, L. CIEP: A Utopia Possível. São Paulo: Livros Tatu, 1991.
• FARIA, Lia. Chaguismo e brizolismo: territorialidades políticas da escola fluminense. Rio de Janeiro: FAPERJ: Quartet, 2011.
• FARIA, Lia; SOUZA, Silvio. A Universidade necessária: Anísio Teixeira e Darcy Ribeiro. VI Congresso Ibero-Americano de História da Educação, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2007.
• HOBSBAWM, Eric. Sobre História. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998.
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• STOCK, SUZETE DE CÁSSIA VOLPATO. Entre a paixão e a rejeição: A trajetória dos CIEPs no Estado de São Paulo - Americana. Dissertação de mestrado. Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Faculdade de Educação. São Paulo: Campinas, 2004.
• TEIXEIRA, Anísio. Educação é um direito. São Paulo: Nacional, 1967.
• XAVIER, Libânea. O Brasil como laboratório: educação e ciências sociais no projeto do Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Educacionais CBPE/Inep/MEC (1950-1960). Bragança Paulista: Ifan/ Cdaph/Edusf, 2000.

• 1
  Inspired by the political-philosophical ideas of equality among people and the right to education for all, these intellectuals saw the state system of public, free, and open education as the only effective way to combat Brazil's social inequalities.
• 2
  Besides the writer Fernando de Azevedo, signed the document: Afrânio Peixoto, A. de Sampaio Dória, J. Frota Pessoa, Anísio Teixeira, M. Lourenço Filho, Roquette Pinto, Júlio de Mesquita Filho, Raul Briquet, Mario Casassanta, Delgado de Carvalho, Ferreira de Almeida Júnior, J. P. Fontenelle, Roldão Lopes de Barros, Noemi da Silveira, Hermes Lima, Atílio Vivacqua, Francisco Venâncio Filho, Paulo Maranhão, Cecília Meirelles, Edgar Sussekind de Mendonça, Armanda Álvaro Alberto, Garcia de Resende, C. Nóbrega da Cunha, Paschoal Leme, and Raul Gomes.
• 3
  Following the English empirical tradition, John Dewey transformed the previous pragmatism into instrumentalism, grounded on an experimental school pedagogically based on these principles (MARTINS FILHO. 1997, P.291).
• 4
  Escola Nova [New School] strongly reverberated in Brazil, greatly inspired by the advancements of the North American educational movement. Its ideas were always inspired by students' learning by themselves, through observation and experimentation, all guided and stimulated by education professionals trained specifically for this end. Doubting the conventional methods, it questioned the conventional pedagogical action.
• 5
  Charles Wagley, a North American anthropologist, lived in Brazil for many years. During World War II, he directed the Migration Program and the Division of Sanitation Education of Sesp (Public Health Special Service).
• 6
  In the 1990s, he started to conceive his foundation: Fundação Darcy Ribeiro (FUNDAR). As a senator for Rio de Janeiro, he approved the proposal of a new Law of Guidelines and Bases for National Education, known as Law Darcy Ribeiro (Lei n°9.394/96). He died in February 1997 from cancer. However, Anísio-Darcy’s utopias and dreams linger amidst the everyday life of Rio de Janeiro public school.

Edited by

Responsible editor:

Doris Bittencourt Almeida

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  11 Dec 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  26 Aug 2023
• Accepted
  05 Sept 2023