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By Fabiana Silva
Starting a conversation, or rather, continuing an old conversation that started when I chose the Pedagogy course. This happened in 2006 and during my undergraduate studies what enchanted me most was popular education, which I call human education.
Training of ethical subjects who are aware of the multiple possibilities of education and how it, practiced in a humanized way, allows rights to be achieved. I am not critical of formal education as “a practice that needs to end”. I defend it tooth and nail, but I know that it alone cannot deal with so many issues that affect individuals who go through processes of multiple violations, including in the area of lack of access to basic rights.
Therefore, having training spaces such as the Public Policy Course such as the one promoted by Casa Fluminense and human education spaces such as the pre-entrance exams of Youth at the University means thinking about the possibility of providing education that projects dreams and weaves networks of knowledge that are not in a formal classroom, but one that makes sense for people who are in search of real and possible dreams based on the search for better living conditions for themselves and their loved ones.
Yes, in a society that worships mercantilist and meritocratic education, having places to build other possibilities is revolutionary, it is necessary. This is what we call Pedagogy in Action. It is precisely the feasibility of having educational spaces that make sense for those who seek to translate the construction of other possibilities through effective actions. Possibilities that equip leaders with historical and social content on public policies and contribute to the development of capacities for formulating, monitoring and influencing public policies and that strengthen community pre-university students working in the peripheries.
We are here making a direct defense of the effective construction of a collective emancipation project that respects each other's differences and that values the lives of previously marginalized people. Each thread that we weave in taking action that enables the construction of human education spaces that form active subjects in the defense, construction and monitoring of public policies will reveal the multiplicities of collective actions that enable networks woven in the commitment to the defense of rights.
With these threads that we propose as a civil society organization, the desire is to embroider together other possibilities through popular education as a space of possibilities. In this tangle of threads we are weaving a new collective embroidery with the exchange of knowledge between people engaged in civil society organizations, social, cultural, community and popular communication movements, active in the outskirts of the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro.
As I said previously, we want to focus on human education that comes from formal non-school education spaces. We want to centrally talk about the importance of training spaces such as the Public Policy Course (CPP), which has already trained around 300 leaders from the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro over seven editions, and the pre-university exams that are part of Juventude na Universidade (Juventude na Universidade) ( JUV), which included more than 150 students in public universities through racial quotas over its three years of existence.
Our central proposal is to talk about how important it is to have spaces for human formation like those mentioned here in the lines of this text. Talk about the importance of social actors who fight for transformations in a space of exchange, creation, loving and supportive relationships. Spaces of affection and also tension that promote effective actions for change. It is these subjects who move us towards building places of possibilities together with them.
As a pedagogue and researcher on human education and its intersections, what moves me, being in the position of Mobilization Coordinator at Casa Fluminense, is the certainty that here we are not only talking about the place of the excluded.
“Those who, as non-citizens, were deprived of the right to education” (CARNEIRO, 2023).
We act to address the rights violations reported by CPP students and also students, teachers and coordinators of Youth at the University.
I am the result of human education spaces that I now follow at Casa Fluminense. I was a social pre-university student and I am also a former student of the Casa Fluminense Public Policy Course – second edition. So, I'm talking about this place. Not from the paradigm of the other, but from the self that is the result of these spaces of possibilities. Therefore, the emotional defense in maintaining human education spaces such as JUV and CPP is because we know how important it is to guarantee the maintenance of these human training spaces.
At the end of the meetings of the Public Policy Course, which last three months, we carry out an evaluation to see if what we offered met the expectations of those who went through the training and also to rethink our practice to create a training space that really adds values and promotes an education that provides access to knowledge and exchange of experiences between participants, strengthening social leaders to defend causes in their territories and influence the electoral debate.
We asked “what aspects of the course were most useful or valuable?” and we also asked if “based on the exchanges observed between students during and after meetings, what caught your attention the most in this process of looking at your project from the other’s perspective?”
Among the evaluations received, I chose two narratives to share.
“Realize that we are still closed within our truths and struggles without any idea of what is happening in other realities and take the time to listen to understand and not just to respond. Understanding that it’s not just my activism that matters, it’s not just what I do that’s important.”
“All the classes taught were of great value, rich content that will make a difference in my way of thinking about public policies based on this learning opportunity. But the most useful thing was the possibility of exchange, exchange with other territories that experience similar situations and being able to actually form a network and build impact in our places of operation.“
As I said previously, spaces of human formation are also spaces of tension and the way we conduct meetings is what creates effective and participatory participation. We do not seek to form leaders who think alike, but rather to build a process of in-depth participation in the formulation, debate and monitoring of public policies in Rio de Janeiro in a complex context of democratic fragility, institutionalized political violence, persecution of activists, disinformation and deepening inequalities.
At the same time, we know that knowledge is not constructed linearly and that it may not even be constructed at all. Many authors still today seek to understand how the process of creating knowledge takes place in all areas of human being/doing. Therefore, we do not seek and do not intend to answer how to deal with so many obstacles. What we seek is to weave possibilities of knowledge that respect cultural differences and that enable opportunities to understand through the exchange of experiences with guests that deal with those who are at the forefront taking actions and promoting changes at the grassroots and those who are in different spaces of power decision proposing law and actions that will impact the end.
We are building paths to create alternatives to knowledge previously seen as shallow. We understand that the various processes that take place in social practice, including the pedagogical practices of the Casa Fluminense Public Policy Course and the methodologies of the 10 pre-university exams supported by the Casa, are multiple. We assume the need to respect the dynamics of the processes occurring in the two spaces of human education and we seek together with the leaders trained by the CPP, students, volunteer teachers and coordinators of Youth at the University to follow the path in which it is perceived that it is necessary for other interested subjects to do part of this change project that Casa Fluminense strongly embraced, but it is collective.
What we observed in the accompaniments together with the human formation spaces that we dialogue with as the party that promotes actions (CPP) and the party that participates in the actions promoted by organizations (JUV) is that both one and the other develop from the breaking of disciplinary boundaries and the creation of networks of relationships that give new meaning to their practices.
Pedagogy in action is precisely the movement that we identified in the pedagogical practices present in the Public Policy Course and also in the Youth at University pre-university courses.
Looking at the CPP and how its initial planning takes place, meetings over three months, choice of external guests ranging from professors from the best universities, progressive politicians, alumni from previous editions, snacks, ticket support, external classes in spaces such as ALERJ, the City Hall Intelligence Center and sanitation circuits and the evaluation processes that aim to improve our pedagogical practice, what we see is the active practice of Pedagogy in Action.
At the same time as monitoring the ten pre-university students with trips to the spaces, promoting meetings between the organizations' pedagogical team, building processes to better serve pre-university students, promoting the exchange of knowledge between them and providing opportunities for discussions about the impact of changes such as the reform of High School and how these changes affect not only students, but also the teaching staff of organizations, who begin to question how to create activities that not only guarantee students' access to university, but that can deal with the absence of mandatory subjects that were removed from the curriculum of students from local public schools.
Pedagogy in action is to identify the problem and act to minimize the impacts promoted by successive attacks against education and create other possibilities for pedagogical practice that respects students, the pedagogical team and the territory of knowledge-promoting actions.
The House has one side in this dispute. Our side is together with the leaders of the Public Policy Course, students and the pedagogical team of the Youth at the University pre-university courses. Our side is full of meanings, as we know the impact generated when we work from an ethical, cultural, social, institutional, economic and rights defense perspective in order to promote real and concrete changes in the defense of human education.
Fabbi Silva, black woman from the favelas. Full degree in Pedagogy from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Studying for a Master's degree in the Postgraduate Program in Education at the State University of Rio de Janeiro – ProPED (UERJ), Creator and Pedagogical Coordinator of the Apadrinhe um Sorriso Association. Mobilization Coordinator of the Casa Fluminense Association. President of the Human Rights Council of the State of Rio de Janeiro
