Fifty Years After Angicos : Paulo Freire, Popular Education and the Struggle for a Better World that is Possible

The main thesis of this paper is that Freire’s original experience in Angicos anticipated a grand design for social transformation of educational systems. As such it brought together two key concepts that formulated the basis of his educational system: popular culture as an counter-hegemonic project and popular education, more particularly what was later called citizen schools or public popular education as keystone of his new educational system. I use the term Paulo Freire System to show that his original attempts were not only to challenge pedagogical the prevailing banking education system that was so pervasive in Brazil and Latin American at the time. In challenging the hegemony of banking education, its narrative, theoretical foundations, epistemology and methodology, Freire and his team sought to create a new system that could replace the old one. They saw banking education not only as obsolete in terms of modernization of systems but also oppressive in gnoseological, epistemological and political terms. In the conclusion of this paper I will discuss the twins obsessions of Freire, already present in the Angicos experience and that will stay with him throughout his life: the relationship between democracy, citizenship and education, and education as a postcolonial ethical act of social transformation. I would like to emphasize therefore that the Paulo Freire system, as conceived in the Angicos experience and its aftermath was a much larger and comprehensive system that originally considered, even by his critics.

Cordel : saberes da literatura popular local-global e sua interação com a cultura e o cotidiano de uma escola do campo

A preocupação central desta pesquisa foi compreender como a literatura popular de cordel, em contexto global, tem contribuído, através da interdisciplinaridade, para o processo de ensino-aprendizagem voltado para o cotidiano e a cultura dos alunos de uma escola rural. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida com 03 professores e 09 alunos do ensino fundamental I de uma escola rural, pertencente à rede municipal de Mossoró RN. Na busca por respostas em torno do objeto pesquisado, foi realizada uma abordagem qualitativa. No primeiro momento, foi feita a observação de campo, onde todos os detalhes eram anotados em um diário de campo, e em seguida foram realizadas as entrevistas e a análise dos dados, esta guiada pela análise de discurso. Os resultados demonstraram que no contexto atual globalizado, a literatura popular de cordel, é um importante instrumento para educação e quando inserido na sala de aula, contribui para o resgate de saberes, valorizando o cotidiano e a cultura local. Sendo assim, o cordel pode ser visto como um instrumento integrador, onde o professor, de forma interdisciplinar, consegue realizar o diálogo com outras disciplinas, diminuindo as barreiras do conhecimento, favorecendo a superação da fragmentação atual entre os saberes.