Popular Pedagogy in the Times of COVID-19: Digital School or Digital Culture

Abstract

This work seeks to reflect upon the importance of critical training in the use of digital media in educational contexts. In such a period in which the school is necessarily forced to become 'digital', one wonders if this complex, and probably necessary, path of renewal brings along an equally and devoted commitment regarding better practices concerning educational intentionality with the use of the new technologies. Therefore, it is in this direction that we have chosen to bring critical research about a reading experience in the Brazilian context. It is an experience that highlights the importance of a perspective of social emancipation where action and reflection are intimately connected and translate into the promotion of a "praxis" that is critically deepened against the hegemonic thought of neoliberalism, which is, at the same time, dispersive. We defend a reading perspective against the manipulations of oppressors who, thanks to the web, feed hate, racists, and misogynist ideas, which are contrary to any kind of equality among human beings. Along with this perspective, the role of educational agencies is invested with an enormous responsibility in promoting digital literacy that provides everyone, especially young people, with tools capable of allowing management and the critical use of the enormous amount of information in which we are immersed. Today, it is important to strive for perspectives of education based on freedom, on the autonomy and the construction of truly democratic societies, in which the benefits and responsibilities of the democratic rule of law can be shared by all people, regardless of their color, origin, religion, sex.