The recovery of the social value of the school involves the recovery of its citizenship in the public space, through its interrelationship with other social institutions and through the professionalization of teachers.
Throughout history, there have been those who have asked for a society without a school, but nowadays it seems that we have schools without a society. I explain. From the 1970s until now, there has been a significant increase in the market among us and a huge decrease in the State's presence in all spheres of civil life. This phenomenon has led to the de-publicization of public affairs and the consequent privatization of life.
Now, the school does not escape this process. Authoritative surveys indicate a vertiginous growth in the private supply of places in our school system, at all levels, which marks a grandiose expansion, not always accompanied by a material and human quality equipment of our establishments in teaching. Located within the market, the school loses its referential as a public thing and a common good, socially produced and which must also be collectively enjoyed.
It is not without reason that the school came to be seen as a company, the student came to be understood as a customer and education professionals were brought to the same level as any other private sector workers. The motto “The student is paying, he has the right” highlights this operation, which ends with an emphasis on the market and the defocusing of education as a good of citizenship. Citizenship rights imply valuing the common good, public affairs; rights whose genesis is in the act of paying lead to individualism and not valuing conviviality in processes of sociability, which have educational processes at their heart.
Given the above, the challenge presented to us, education professionals, and to society is to rescue the citizenship of the school as a public institution. The private initiative, free to provide educational services, should understand education as a concession that society makes it through the State, but it, school education, cannot and should not be treated like the others goods. This implies less emphasis on the educational market and more emphasis on the school as a social institution.
Alongside the rescue of the school's citizenship in the public space, another challenge it has to face is what concerns the interrelationship of the school with the wide network of social institutions that the encircles. Relating only to companies does not seem healthy to us, as there are also private organizations. the churches, the unions, the family, the various state bodies, among many others that we could remember on here. If the school sees itself as a social institution and articulates itself with other institutions social, then it will have to offer and receive from the economic, political and cultural spheres of our society. This interrelationship may lead to gains that enhance the emancipation of Brazilian society, and not its subjugation to the voracious and individualizing market that seems to prevail in our days. It is a case of seeing the school less as a company between companies and more as a social institution between social institutions.
Finally, it remains for the school to implement socially referenced programs in order to enable the professionalization of teaching. There, functional autonomy, self-regulation and a monopoly in the provision of educational services are valid. Without teachers being conceived as professionals, it is difficult to undertake an emancipatory education that directs us towards the consolidation of a society truly citizen, based on social mechanisms that guarantee more freedom, more justice, more equality and more humanity to all who do and suffer the education.
In summary: the school needs to have a public reference, be institutionally articulated and be led by professionals who are really committed to the destinations of the Brazilian nation towards human, scientific, philosophical, technological and cultural development, with a view to achieving sovereignty national.
Per Wilson Correia
Master in Education
Columnist Brazil School
education - Brazil School
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/educacao/escola-desafios-vista.htm
