Education (nem both) superior, more democratic (perhaps)

Abstract

While we are overwhelmed or run over by digital technological advances that will greatly annoy us, especially in relation to an education that will become even more neoliberalized (commercialized), let us pretend that education is holding its own. One of Darcy Ribeiro’s most eloquent observations was that the Brazilian educational crisis is not a crisis; it is a project (Roitman, 2022). The crisis is all the more acute the less we want to notice it. This alienation is secular among us, partly because the educational system serves the elite, through the rule of quotas: the best university has always been a quota for the richest, blatantly so. The black quota is often a counter-quota, a response and this is more than enough to justify it. But, as in every social policy there is a trap, the trap here is that, if there is some access, continuity is not ensured, which implies emptying the opportunity, especially for the most in-demand courses. In general, the quota holder does not fail (that would be very bad!), but he does not need to: he himself is discouraged. There is, however, a consolation, because access has become somewhat democratized, at least less formally. Other adventures, however, wear down the institution, partly for a reason, but partly because of traditional ineptitude: instead of trying to understand the change, to feel master or a measure of it, it falls behind. Education does not change, but times change. In this text I endeavour to account, even if only in a very preliminary way, for some of the challenges facing the university, rather lost in the world of the moon, but a little more democratic.