UNLEARNING

“Pointing to the chronic separation between universities and the knowledge produced by the popular classes, the Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Souza Santos of the University of Coimbra, opened the World Forum of Popular Education on Sunday in Porto Alegre, warning that everything needs to be redone in this area. We need to unlearn the ways of education employed today.

Historically, as he showed, there has been a double exclusion of the popular classes: for not having access to universities and finding, when they can access, content hostile to their interests and aspirations. “The university imparts knowledge of the elites to reproduce the elites,” he said.

Abandoned school in São Gonçalo, Brazil.

Unfortunately abandonment of schools is not a rare phenomenon. Especially in poor areas, maintaining wages and expenses is close to impossible without government support, and even then it’s a struggle. This became clear when over 200 schools were occupied as protest against the  restructuring of basic education in São Paulo state. We all knew ‘restructuring’ meant the closing of hundreds of schools and downsizing of staff.

In the state of Rio de Janeiro there are many abandoned schools that serve as shelter for drug addicts/dealers, while other abandoned properties serve as temporary shelter for homeless workers. Brazil has developed a strong resistance movement that inspires people to self-organize in protest for their rights to education and shelter.

There is one school in particular, in the neighborhood of Santa Luzia, in the city of São Gonçalo, Rio de Janeiro state that we want to reopen. This area is fairly near the city of Rio, but opposite direction from the coast. There is no iconic skyline to disguise the poverty, homelessness, drug addiction and fundamentalist Christianity. In an attempt to ‘clean up’ the city of Rio for the World Cup, traffickers were pushed inland of the state by a newly formed branch of the federal police. In these areas, evangelism is dominant. Autonomous spaces are non-existent and the population is completely under the influence of either the Evangelical church or the drug traffickers.

This school was my grandmother’s, and since she died it has been abandoned and collecting debt from property taxes. The redevelopment of this school as a cultural center is really important to me and to my family as a way to honor my granmother’s legacy, but it would also make an enormous impact on the community, and its influence can ripple across the country. Renovations and clearing the debt will provide us with the opportunity to make that space into a safe haven from the hardships of life at the region.

This elementary school had over 15 classrooms, a swimming pool, football court, vegetable garden and a 4-bedroom adjacent house. Everyone in the neighborhood has somehow been impacted by this school; either they or their children studied there, and they either taught or got married there. It was an extremely influential place for the community. And it has been abandoned for over 20 years.

A Cultural Center

My idea for the space is not what my grandmother’s idea for it was. She fought and worked hard to build this school and to shape young minds into what she believed was virtuous; a classical and spiritual virtue not yet present in that region at the time, but representative of the best the world could then offer.

Times have changed, and these virtues have changed with it. The system that we depended on to sustain and value this incredibly important educational initiative did not prevail. Without trustworthy governamental management, this project had no hope to survive in its entrepreneurial spirit alone, especially not in a place where capitalism shows its flaws the most.

Considering our current political climate, we need to start thinking of new ways to operate, and take matters into our own hands in any way we can. So, for me, rethinking and rebuilding my grandmother’s school is not only the best way to continue her work, it’s also my best shot at leaving the world better than I found it. And like everything else in like, I can’t do it alone.

Here is the idea:

–Daycare. Due do the high rates of teenage pregnancies in the area, daycare is very needed so these young women can continue to study or work to be financially intependent from abusive relationships.

–Women’s safe space and health education. For the same reason as previously mentioned, an educational and sharing space for mothers can also exist.

–English school. An extra-curricular intensive English school for people of all ages, which can provide us with some income from tuitions. Based on an alternative method of learning by doing. Anything from cooking, to gardening, to yoga in the English language. We will have computer’s and internet provided with my father’s telecommunications experience, and we will have a flux of teachers from abroad that will live temporarily in the adjacent house while they teach and participate in the school’s weekly routine.