A vocation for evil.

The other day, while channel surfing, I came across TV Senado and they were showing the excellent documentary “Vocacional – Uma Aventura Humana” [1] about the six vocational schools that existed in the State of São Paulo in the 60s of the last century.

One of these schools was the “Oswaldo Aranha Vocational Gymnasium,” which operated (and still operates) in the Brooklin neighborhood, located in the southern part of the city of São Paulo. The other five schools were scattered throughout the state's interior in the cities of Batatais (“Cândido Portinari Vocational Gymnasium”), São Caetano (“São Caetano do Sul Vila de Santa Maria Vocational Gymnasium”), Americana (“Papa João XXIII Vocational Gymnasium”), Rio Claro (“Chanceler Raul Fernandes Vocational Gymnasium”), and Barretos (“Ambassador Macedo Soares Vocational Gymnasium”).

I didn't study at the "Oswaldo Aranha Vocational High School," but I have friends who did. I researched the subject and found this information: “In the 1960s, the São Paulo State Vocational Education Service (SEV) was created by legislation, comprising six vocational high schools, including the Oswaldo Aranha High School, inaugurated in 1962. The vocational schools aimed to develop an interdisciplinary education, working with the student's personality so that they could develop their skills. This pedagogical vision was antagonistic to the one that the dictatorship sought to encourage, which was more focused on the accumulation of technical knowledge useful to the job market. Conflicts between the high school and the regime soon arose, until in 1969 Maria Nilde Mascellani, the program coordinator, was removed from her position. Intensified by surveillance and threats of budget cuts, a coordinated police raid on all SEV schools in the same year led to the closure of the pedagogical experiment, with the intervention of the Secretariat in the service.” [2]

It is worth noting that the tendency towards malice on the part of dictatorial governments, with regard to innovative education projects, occurred in the not-too-distant past and, regrettably, persists today in several countries, aiming to undermine education (and ultimately destroy it) for people at all levels.

Taking Brazil as an example, one only needs to look at the paths taken by the dictatorship from 1964 to 1985 and the proto-dictatorship from 2019 to 2022, which would certainly have continued with a new dictatorship, which was not consummated by the coup of January 8, 2023, orchestrated, as we know, well in advance by the military in power. Does anyone doubt that sabotaging education is one of the ways to subjugate peoples for the perpetuation of power and under the dominion of a powerful few?

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means siding with the powerful, not being neutral. The educator has a duty not to be neutral." - Paulo Freire.

Sources

[1] “Vocational – A Human Adventure” documentary by Toni Ventura from 2011.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NB7FZxdEwg

[2] Memorial of the Resistance.

https://memorialdaresistenciasp.org.br/lugares/ginasio-vocacionaloswaldo-aranha/

*Heraldo Campos is a geologist (Institute of Geosciences and Exact Sciences of UNESP, 1976), holds a master's degree in General and Applied Geology and a doctorate in Sciences (Institute of Geosciences of USP, 1987 and 1993), and completed postdoctoral studies in hydrogeology (Polytechnic University of Catalonia and São Carlos School of Engineering of USP, 2000 and 2010).