The difficult reconstruction of education.

Until 2016, Brazil had been making progress in the field of education. The PNAD (National Household Sample Survey) reported that enrollment in the education system for children aged four to five, preschool age, had increased from 72,5% in 2005 to 89,1% in 2014, and that access to basic education had risen from 89,5% to 93,6% in the previous 10 years. Of the 44,3 million Brazilians aged between four and 17, 41,5 million were in school in 2014.

The absolute destruction of any kind of social progress did not begin with Jair Bolsonaro, but with Michel Temer, during whose government the current plan for the New High School curriculum was launched, now suspended. With Bolsonaro came the total dismantling, so there is much more to do than just halting the implementation of the New High School curriculum. It is also necessary to look at higher education.

It's worth remembering.

The government of the captain acted rhetorically and administratively as an enemy of education. For Bolsonaro and for ministers Vélez Rodrigues, Abraham Weintraub, and Milton Ribeiro—it's difficult to choose the worst—teachers were Marxist preachers and as such should be monitored and denounced. Sociology and philosophy were considered dispensable in student education. Federal universities did nothing but promote "chaos."

A financial sector expert, Weintraub arrived at the Ministry of Education announcing cuts to the University of Brasília, the Federal Fluminense University, and the Federal University of Bahia. Right away, the Bolsonaro government imposed cuts of 2,08 billion reais on federal universities, equivalent to 29,74% of their discretionary budget of 6,99 billion reais.

By not including public higher education among its priorities when allocating resources, the Bolsonaro government demonstrated a lack of awareness that of the 50 institutions that publish the most scientific papers in the country, 36 are federal universities and seven are state universities.

One of Brazil's most respected scientists, an international authority on climate issues, Carlos Afonso Nobre told the columnist at the time that 95% of research in Brazil is conducted at public universities. The remaining 5% is carried out by four private institutions – PUC, Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Insper, and Mackenzie.

“All governments with authoritarian leanings, whether left or right, work to silence the university,” stated Nobre, linking the idea of ​​dismantling public education to the neoliberal principles that emerged with Ronald Reagan's presidency in the United States in the 80s and have gained strength now in the figure of Donald Trump. 

“Reagan, Trump, and their followers believe that lowering taxes on the rich is all it takes to develop a country. It's important to point out, however, that while universities in the United States are not public, they do receive substantial public funding,” the scientist highlighted.

 As a counterpoint, he cited South Korea, which was hit hard in the 2008 crisis but, even in the face of a brutal drop in its exports, increased investments in science and technology. "When they go through a tough time, they think about how to become more resilient and competitive in the future," he praised.

But are Brazilian professors leftists? Certainly, many are, and just as many are not. However, academic freedom must be guaranteed to them. In any case, the so-called "cultural Marxism" that supposedly predominates in academic circles is fiction. Karl Marx – as much as Hegel, Adorno, or Plato – is a philosophical reference point for humanity. To imagine that talking about Marx in a classroom will lead young 21st-century students to wield hammer and sickle against capitalism and "families" is an affront to common sense. And it is, above all, an ideologized view. 

In any field of human activity, the development of critical thinking is absolutely central, even more so today, when information is abundant at every turn. It is necessary to transform this information into knowledge, and this knowledge is only achieved when a critical perspective is acquired. 

Remember that philosophy and sociology were taught in many high schools before being eliminated by the military regime. The military at the time, along with the dominant political forces, believed that those classes were a kind of haven for communists, which was nonsense even then.

In the current conflict-ridden scenario, only a curriculum shaped by technical and pedagogical criteria that reflects civilizational advancements, in a way that is appropriate to the Brazilian reality, can make education an instrument for building the future – one would believe that the Lula government thinks this way.