A little more than six months ago, precisely on 12th July, the Brazilian writer Anisio Teixeira would complete 120 years old. So this post is a tribute to him. He fought all his life for a better Brazilian education in all levels, but for change really happens we need to involve everybody in this fight, doing quality education a priority for parents, policymakers, educators and students. This post is a summary of three article the first was published at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An%C3%ADsio_Teixeira. The second was published at https://humanas.blog.scielo.org/en/2020/10/22/in-democracy-education-is-not-a-privilege/. The third was published at https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-59702012000200017&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en
Anisio Spínola Teixeira (1900-1971) was a Brazilian educator, jurist and writer. He was one of the reformers of Brazilian education of the early 20th century, being an advocate of progressive education in the country. He was one of the co-founders of the University of the Federal District in 1935, and of the University of Brasilia in 1960. Anisio Teixeira was born in Caetité, Bahia, child of a doctor and landowner, he graduated in Law at the UFRJ in 1922. He started working as general-inspector of education of the state of Bahia in 1924, and visited Europe between 1925 and 1927, studying the educational system of several countries. In 1927, he went to the U.S. studying at the Columbia University, where he came in touch with John Dewey's pragmatism. Inspired by that philosophy, Anisio came back to Brazil where he went to be R.J. Director of Education. He believed that education should be public, free, and laicist, attuned to a developing industrialized society, not focusing in memoration, but allowing the students' development. In 1951, he was appointed director of Instituto Nacional de Estudos e pesquisas (INEP). He with Darcy Ribeiro and other, planned a new university for Brasilia and then UNB was founded in 1961, with Anisio Teixeira as its first rector. After the 1964 Brazilian coup d'etat, Teixeira went to the U.S., teaching at the Universities of Columbia and California. Back in Brazil in 1966, he became a consultant for the Getulio Vargas Foundation. Anisio Teixeira died in 1971, in circumstances considered obscure. His body was found in an elevator in Rio de Janeiro. Despite the accidental death report, there are suspicions that he was a victim of the repression forces of military government. In Anisio's view, the public school offers a democratic, critical, emancipatory education which are the basis for integration and social development. In this aspect, schools for a democratic society must necessary be universal, free, mandatory, secular and efficient, also it must constitute national policy. The education he proposed consists of creating a democratic environment provided by scholar education that demands a school built for this purpose. The public school, proposed by Anisio, is one that enables and stimulates the plurality of social participation and considers the students' interest in educational practice, focusing its work on the development of students' relational, intellectual and operational skills. It is through this school that we can make individuals realize the importance of their intellectual freedom, the development of their abilities, and how much they are strengthened when thinking and practicing together. Therefore, public schools is they way to establish intellectual and political equality, In Anisio Teixeira's view (1971), this is the way in which the problems of the rigid social stratification and the serious unevenness of Brazilian society could be faced, aiming for the creation of equal opportunities according to the essence of the democratic regime. The research points to the need of raising awareness and fighting for democratic rights, especially in the field of education, and of the investment of training professional educators with a reflexive, critical, and political freedom. For the democratic transformation to happen, it is also proposed the construction of educational public policies that encourage and provide opportunities for popular participation as a mean to develop citizenship habits. Thus, the schools is no longer an institution separated from reality and becomes the space of an educational community that interacts with civil society. The reflection upon the role of the public school, in the formation of a democratic society, becomes even more pertinent and necessary in the time that the world is living. The COVID19 pandemic increased social inequality in education and quality education is everyone's right and democracy can not tolerate the privileges of the elites. "Education is not just an asset for individuals, but a need for society". This statement by Anisio Teixeira was made in May 1968. His intention upon saying this was to highlight the social function of universities, which he understood as shaping and divulging the nation's culture, as producing knowledge, as fostering empirical study and research, as harboring professionals of acknowledged technical expertise. If the problem of Brazil's modernization was on the agenda in the 1920s-1930s, uniting the education who signed the 1932 manifesto, then in the 1950s-1960s, the same issue was taken up again in a different manifesto that was published in 1959. With many signatories in common with the previous ,amifesto, with whom new figures joined forces, the manifesto "mais uma vez convocados" expressed the urgency they felt at the time to have education democratized. The changes brought in by the coup d'etate and ensuing military dictatorship in 1964 marked another period of regression and dispersion of the work of intellectuals involved in education projects, demonstrating that in Brazil the impact caused by new institutional models is not enough of itself to assure results, nor even the continuation of changes in the field of culture. The movement to restructure Brazil's universities in the 1960s was constrained by the higher education reform of 1968. This reform was critized on two counts by Anisio Teixeira, who did not believe that changing, improving or modernizing Brazil's universities could be achieved by legal instruments. In his view, higher education reform had to burgeon from the inside. Defending liberty as a basic principle and by which teaching and research were undertaken within universities. Anisio further added that the steadfast defensen of universities autonomy could never be achieve as a state concession, but as the outcome of the free exercise of university activities, constituting a model of democratic culture and practice.
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