“Student papers are tests for character, not for
intelligence. Whether spelling, versioning or calculating, it's about learning how to
want” (Alain).
We, those who make and undergo higher education, know how challenging the task of contributing to the formation of character, intelligence and learning to want in our students is.
I am from a time when knowledge was not only suitable for acquiring a certificate. Knowledge should serve to substantiate the construction of a nation project for Brazil, of a societal model worthy of human stature.
Another motivation we had when we aspired to know was linked to the desire for personal education, centered on the desire for an existential style that would be interesting and consequential. In this process, freedom, justice and responsibility were the values that guided us when we went to the banks university students and we opened our ears to classes from those who stood in front of us in the performance of the roles of masters and advisors. In other words, instead of certification, we pursued training.
Today, however, things look upside down. The cross-eyed rush to hunt for certificates, like passwords to the celebrated temple of the “job market” god, seems to be confusing our students and dulling their spirits.
I suspect that the tidal waves that have developed since the beginnings of Western Modernity and that configure themselves in anthropocentrism and individualism are enclosing our students in them same. This cruel ideology expropriates citizens, in general, and academics, in particular, from the expanded notion of what life is. Individual in themselves, but split at the core of their being, what they lack is that sense of social responsibility, which is associated with the notion of public affairs and common good, the shared dimension of life in society.
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The imperative now seems to be to keep an eye on your own navel at all costs, even if the obtuseness of this attitude causes you to stumble when the collective side of life in society asks them for organic and solidary citizenship from a more anthropological dimension. deep.
Because of this new wave, that of individual success by fire and iron, a certain MMA ethic floods our classrooms. Indicatives of this ethics can be seen when the law of least effort, the rule of zero will and the principle of null commitment are evoked so that the accusation that "the teacher is too demanding" appears in the mouths university students.
If we can agree with Kant when he says that “Man is what education makes him”, then we can ask: who is this certifying education forming? What man and woman will we find in the post-university period, when certified men and women have Brazil in their hands? Will it be the resurgence of the “every man for himself” norm and the “any and every advantage in everything and at any price” rule that will prevail over our heads?
These issues are too serious for the market to resolve. For our part, perhaps it is time to focus strength on the role of good training. But... is this what our students want?
Per Wilson Correia*
Columnist Brazil School
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*Wilson Correia is a philosopher, psychopedagogist, PhD in Education from UNICAMP, professor at the University Federal do Tocantins, Campo Universitário de Arraias, and author of the book Saber Ensinar (São Paulo: EPU, 2006). E-mail address: [email protected].
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Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
RODRIGUES, Lana Julia. "What do our students want?"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/educacao/o-que-querem-nossos-estudantes.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
