Now a university student, 19-year-old Brazilian native Nathalia Maciel, who identifies as a black woman, got used to hearing in the classroom about white heroes and heroines and the deeds of Europeans who arrived in Brazil. She studied primary and secondary education at a public school in the administrative region of Santa Maria, 40 km from the center of the capital. “I missed knowing about black people, who were only mentioned on November 20 (Day of Black Consciousness). People only did it to get grades in the subjects”, she laments. The student’s perception of the lack of projects that value diversity and face problems such as racism can be seen in numbers. According to a survey by the NGO Todos Pela Educação, only half (50.1%) of public schools in the country took action against racism in 2021, the year in which the last survey of the National Basic Assessment System (Saeb) was carried out. The fact is that, that year, the total number of public schools with projects to combat racism, sexism and homophobia fell to the lowest level in 10 years. The data used were extracted from Saeb’s contextual questionnaires aimed at school principals between 2011 and 2021. Failures Researcher Daniela Mendes, educational policy analyst at Todos Pela Educação, contextualizes that when racial and gender issues are not addressed within schools, teaching fails both in the students’ learning process and in building a better society, with less violence and less inequalities. “The impact that these data show us is not just educational. The violence suffered in schools can be both physical and verbal and symbolic with insinuations and constraints that make the school environment a hostile space for certain groups. This has an impact on school dropouts,” said Daniela Mendes. Colonization According to what researcher Gina Vieira, a public school teacher in the Federal District and with award-winning projects in relation to diversity in the classroom, analyzes, schools in Brazil do not promote diversity. “The Brazilian school, as well as the country’s colonization project, works on the logic of homogenization. So we have a racist curriculum and a racist education. We have an official curriculum that still tells the official story that is told from the perspective of the European white man”, she points out. She explains that diverse pedagogical materials that incorporate the voices of historically excluded peoples are rare. “We are, for example, celebrating 20 years of Law 10,639 [que inclui História e Cultura Afro-Brasileira no currículo escolar], which is the result of the historic struggle of the black movement for the right to the history of Africa and black people in the diaspora”. She cites that laws are not enough to change perspectives, but a cultural change and public policy. “As Drummond says, lilies are not born by law”. Falling The number of schools with diversity-aware projects began to fall from 2015 onwards, when the index had reached the highest level in the period: 75.6%. Since then, the numbers have plummeted. In addition to racism, action against homophobia and machismo is in the smallest part of Brazilian schools. In 2011, for example, 34.7% of schools reported having actions. In 2017, the index reached 43.7%. But, it also dropped in the following years. In 2021, it represented only 25.5%. For Daniela Mendes, educational policy analyst at Todos Pela Educação, the advance of an ultraconservative agenda in recent years, the impacts of the pandemic and the lack of national coordination during the last administration of the Ministry of Education were factors that may have influenced the scenario. For teacher Gina Vieira, it is up to society to be mobilized to demand an anti-racist school and against sexism and homophobia. “We need to strongly reject this perspective that we have lived in the last four years between the teacher and the school represented as enemies of society. As someone I must supervise, denounce, record and mock. A country that does not value education, schools and educators is doomed to setbacks”, she says. Measures In a note to the report, the Ministry of Education guaranteed that it has been working to change this scenario since the beginning of the current administration. The first action was the recreation of Secadi (Department of Continuing Education, Youth and Adult Literacy, Diversity and Inclusion). “A folder that already configures itself as an affirmative action, in which it has in its structure the Directorate of Ethnic-racial Education Policies Quilombola School Education, an institutional instrument to formulate, articulate and execute policies aimed at the implementation of Law 10.639/03”. In addition, according to MEC, teacher training was resumed based on financial support for universities and the Abdias Nascimento Academic Development Program was relaunched, which encourages undergraduate and graduate research. “Another rescued initiative was Cadara, the MEC advisory commission formed by federal entities and civil society. There is still a long way to go, but today Secadi is committed to guaranteeing resources so that next year it can invest even more in actions to combat racism”. For Ingridy, who is a 15-year-old black teenager, also a resident of Brasilia, and a public school student, a school concerned with diversity and willing to not be homogeneous would also be fundamental for everyday life. And this looks like a simple lesson. “It would help combat prejudice and promote respect and acceptance at school,” she says.
Agência Brasil
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