Academic philistinism

The expression "academic philistinism" stems from the iconoclastic critique by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche of the German university system of his time. Nietzsche argued that the thinkers of his generation were only concerned with their careers and the social and professional achievements they could provide. They considered rhetorical knowledge irrelevant to life. To these thinkers, Goethe is said to have dedicated his famous phrase: "Gray is all theory. Green is the tree of life."

These considerations arise at a time when the Ministry of Education is considering ending the system of evaluating university careers through consultation and input into the so-called "Lattes platform," painstakingly improved by CAPES and CNPq. I want to state, initially, that I have always had many reservations about this system of evaluating teaching work. As a Philosophy student, since my high school days, I have never appreciated the quantitative and bureaucratic criteria of this way of judging the knowledge produced within universities. I call this evaluative system academic Taylorism, or university productivism. It assesses value by quantity, expressed in certificates, papers, and publications. Our current postgraduate education is based on this type of judgment. In other words, the social relevance of this knowledge matters little.

Despite these criticisms, nothing justifies the hatred of knowledge, universities, and teachers demonstrated by the current government, through its managers and representatives. The current minister's willingness to replace the militarization of schools with public-private partnerships with business and religious foundations is very serious, not only because of the progressive public refinancing of education (through the mechanism of decoupling constitutional budget items), but above all because of the instrumental, technical, and pragmatic nature of a type of education—with a simplified profile—for a labor market in crisis and deregulated. Educating for the savage and unrestrained exploitation of cheap labor.
This attack against the Lattes Platform by the current education administrators in the country is a blatant manifestation of the most shallow anti-intellectualism serving the interests of the market, especially private education and workforce training companies. It adds to that other statement about the unnecessary need for people from the Northeast to study philosophy, history, sociology, arts, etc.

For the children of the economic and social elite, one type of comprehensive and humanistic education. For the children of the common people, another. This is how class and regional inequality is reproduced in Brazil.