Mercadante demands investigation into changes to Paulo Freire's profile.

247 - Former Minister of Education in Dilma's government, Aloizio Mercadante, demanded that Michel Temer's interim government investigate the changes made to educator Paulo Freire's profile on Wikipedia from a network belonging to the Federal Data Processing Service (Serpro). In a statement to 247, this Monday (4), Mercadante said that it is "unacceptable that the attacks made on the patron of Brazilian education, from a computer network under the responsibility of the Brazilian state, are ignored and remain without due clarification".

Last Thursday (28), the article containing Freire's biography in the free encyclopedia was altered with information attributing to the educator the origin of "Marxist indoctrination" in schools and universities. In the edited entry, it states that Freire participated in the last major reform of educational legislation that resulted in an "outdated, doctrinaire and weak" education. "The authors of this absurdity must be identified and held accountable," says Mercadante.

A group that monitors changes made to Wikipedia pages identified that the changes originated from a Serpro network. In a statement, the federal government's information technology company said that the change did not originate from its facilities, but from a federal public agency whose name cannot be disclosed due to contractual reasons. Serpro manages the network that provides internet access both in its own facilities and in public institutions throughout the country.

The paragraphs included in the article were taken from a text published on the Instituto Liberal website entitled "Paulo Freire and the Assassination of Knowledge." The text is authored by a member of the Students for Liberty network and the Free University Movement.

"It is unacceptable that a matter of such gravity be ignored by the interim and provisional government," Mercadante stated. "We must defend Paulo Freire. We are talking about the patron of Brazilian education," said the former minister.

Mercadante recalled the Dilma government's stance in the case where the Wikipedia profiles of journalists Carlos Alberto Sardenberg and Míriam Leitão were altered from a network within the Presidential Palace in 2014. "Our government, respecting the full right to a defense and due process, established an Investigative Inquiry Commission, identified the responsible party, and took all appropriate measures," he stated.

The educator's widow, Nita Freire, also protested Against the changes made to Paulo Freire's profile on Wikipedia. In an open letter to the interim president, Nita demands "intervention to restore Justice and Truth".

According to Nita's letter, "it is inconceivable that in a democratic society, phrases laden with hatred and prejudice such as 'Paulo Freire and the Assassination of Knowledge' would be disseminated, absurdly and ironically, in the year in which Paulo Freire is being considered in the USA as the third most cited intellectual in the world, and therefore the most studied in American universities, which, in principle, are against Marxism."

The principal work of the educator Paulo Freire, from Pernambuco, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" (1968), is the third most cited worldwide in the humanities, according to a survey conducted on Google Scholar, a research tool dedicated to academic literature. The educator is also a national reference in research in this area.