Bolsonaro proposes outrageous things for education.

For Paulo Freire, patron of Brazilian education.

Some people think that Bolsonaro's candidacy is a problem exclusive to the right wing, and from an electoral point of view, it really is. This is because the candidate representing the continuity of the coup and its neoliberal policies, Geraldo Alckmin, and the formal candidate of the coup, Henrique Meirelles, will have to compete for a portion of conservative voters with the far right and its truculence.

However, democracy and human rights are non-negotiable principles. They are civilizational values ​​that must be defended by all of society, always. Democracy is such a fantastic system of government that it even allows those who threaten and attack it, defenders of military dictatorship and a supposed military intervention, to be candidates. And furthermore, those who believe that the formation of the Brazilian people is related to the "indolence of the indigenous people and the cunning of the Africans" compete for the popular vote of a predominantly Afro-descendant population.

The candidate himself publicly supports notorious torturers, as in the case of the vote he cast in the Chamber of Deputies regarding the coup against President Dilma. He also called, in the recent past, for the execution of those who defended privatizations, which he now unconditionally supports.

But, among so many outrageous things, what is most shocking are the proposals for education. Under the fallacious pretext of combating Marxism and implementing an obscurantist, homophobic, and prejudiced educational proposal, inspired by the so-called "non-partisan school," the candidate proposes the absurd replacement of in-person education with distance learning at all levels of education.

In elementary education, we still face an immense challenge in literacy. The National Literacy Assessment (ANA) exam, which we introduced in 2012, revealed that 22% of children cannot read, 34% cannot write, and 54% do not master the basic principles of arithmetic by the age of eight, as they should. And 75% of this gap is concentrated among children living in poverty, on the outskirts of large cities, in the semi-arid Northeast of Brazil, and among riverside communities in the Amazon. We initiated a massive effort to provide coverage for daycare centers and preschools to strengthen the learning and social interaction process, especially for this population of children from poor and illiterate families, concentrated in 180 schools. We launched the National Pact for Literacy at the Right Age (PNAIC), ensuring teaching materials, scholarships, and a continuing education program, in partnership with public universities, for all 300 literacy teachers. Meanwhile, we are making progress in full-time schooling, complementing the curriculum with reinforcement in Portuguese and mathematics, along with more physical education and arts activities. The IDEB (Basic Education Development Index) has advanced above expectations in the early years of elementary school. The biggest challenge lies in schools located in impoverished areas, where many resources are lacking, including broadband and internet access.

Well, the candidate wants to remove children from the process of interaction and learning at school and replace it with distance education.

This proposal is already present in the high school reform of the coup government, which intends to replace a substantial part of the curriculum with distance learning, and to implement the unacceptable privatization of Fundeb (National Fund for Basic Education), without any quality control, when everyone knows about the lack of resources and investment in a large part of Brazilian public schools.

In practice, what the candidate is advocating is the unbridled liberalization of distance education with the clear objective of privatizing public education. Worse still, this absurdity is accompanied by the weakening of state regulation and quality control, with the elimination of mandatory oversight of on-site learning centers in higher education and the offering of vocational courses not listed in the National Catalog of Technical Courses, as is happening under the Temer administration.

Without any quality control over the institutions and content offered through distance learning, we will experience a brutal educational segregation. It is the institutionalization of a true educational apartheid between students in private schools with in-person instruction and those in public schools with distance learning, a phenomenon that has been very present throughout Brazilian history.

The expansion of hybrid education, which combines in-person and distance learning, is occurring worldwide, but with monitoring and quality control criteria. New technologies should be used to complement the school day, that is, to improve the teacher-student relationship, to enrich school life, and to integrate students into the knowledge society. This is why we expanded the number of computer labs in schools and distributed tablets to high school teachers. New digital technologies should not empty schools under the pretext of a fundamentalist and unwarranted ideological patrol.

Furthermore, school life is fundamental to the development of our students. School is an environment for discovering knowledge, interacting with diversity, culture, and education, complemented by the teaching of arts and physical education. School should prepare students for life in a broad sense, encompassing family, social, and professional life. In the peripheries of large urban centers, where violence and drugs are so prevalent, exclusion from the school environment represents an immense and dangerous setback for civilization and increases the risk for children, young people, and their families.

The candidate is constantly attacking discussions about diversity in schools, contributing to increased prejudice and obscurantism. The fact is, however much some may deny it, there are numerous cases of children suffering from bullying and returning home crying every day, victims of aggression due to intolerance. Therefore, schools must be welcoming, allowing for respectful coexistence with all differences.

Bolsonaro also recently declared that he would use a flamethrower to burn and remove supporters of the patron of Brazilian education, Paulo Freire, from the Ministry of Education. I met Paulo Freire when he returned from exile in the late 70s and we taught at PUC/SP. A brilliant, profound, creative, innovative intellectual and a delicate, respectful person who always had something to teach, in every sentence, in every gesture.

Besides being the Brazilian with the most honorary doctorate degrees in the world, Paulo Freire is a man who dedicated his life to education and made an invaluable contribution to the country, starting with the construction of liberating pedagogy for literacy education for young people and adults. He spent a significant part of his life in forced exile to overcome the perverse historical legacy of illiteracy. It's enough to remember that in 1920, 75% of the Brazilian population was illiterate.

During his lifetime, Paulo Freire was persecuted by the military dictatorship, which exiled, tortured, censored, and silenced Brazilian democracy. Now, in death, his memory and work are being affronted by a presidential candidate who repeatedly attacks the democratic rule of law. But, just as the democratic struggle defeated the military dictatorship in the 2018 elections, with the popular vote, we will defeat the candidates of the coups, all of them, whether from the 1964 coup or the 2016 coup.