Conceptions of Education and Its Influence on the Brazilian Educational System: Some Examples Derived from the Socio-Cultural History

Abstract

In the face of a contemporary crisis in education, a historical and critical reinterpretation of the Brazilian sociocultural world is appropriate, specifically for the concepts of education that prevailed in this area. Taking into account the multiethnic and multicultural diversity of the country, we need to recognize the existence of a multiplicity of conceptions regarding education, which were present in several forms throughout history, using various expressive methods and instruments. In this chapter, we focus on a few approaches that deserve special mention for having played a decisive role in the course of Brazilian history and in the Brazilian educational system: the concept of education in oral, indigenous, African, and Lusitanian cultures whose past we know indirectly by reports from missionaries and travelers; the concept of education proper to the Jesuit missionaries who endeavored in the challenge of providing educational experiences in all locations of their operations in Brazilian territory; and the modern conception of education of the twentieth century, especially the groups that in Brazil became spokespeople and project handlers of American progressive education. Other immigrant groups belonging to diverse ethnicities, over the centuries, brought to Brazil their traditions (coming from Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, North America) and made the educational process an important ambit for the preservation and transmission of traditions to new generations. A constant tension in Brazilian history between educational experiences created by social subjects and institutional policies is evinced. Education can become a process centered on the child as an individual and not as an object of educational policymaking, if society gives attention to the educational experiences (and conceptions derived from them) that are inherent in Brazilian culture.