Vol. 13 No. 1 (2024): RETROSPECTIVE, CHALLENGES, AND PERSPECTIVES FOR BASIC EDUCATION IN BRAZIL

This special edition intends to outline guidelines, parallels, and perspectives for reflections facing different debates which lead Basic Education in Brazil - considered by Federal Law 9.394/1996/LDB the first level of teaching, comprising pre-school, primary, and secondary school. Acknowledging education as fundamental for individual social subsistence, their understanding as social subjects, fruition, as well as citizenship fulfilment, this call for papers aims at bringing multiple connections and views regarding what sort of education one has strived for within a country of deep social, cultural and demographic contrasts, which include alarming index of functional illiteracy. In view of this context, it’s necessary to establish guidelines to ensure the right to education and, beyond that, public policies focused on reducing inequalities linked to school failure/success. The complexity of these challenges, deepened in the ‘post-pandemic’ context, mainly in public schools, shoes the need to review pedagogical principles, which includes the national curriculum structure, plus the adoption of strategies intended to reinforce the access to basic quality education, as equal and democratic as possible. In this regard, the pandemic not only represented a sanitary crisis of historic proportions, but also  brought as a consequence the highest adversity ever faced by Brazil’s education system in terms of guaranteeing school attendance and permanence as unequal remote learning has proved the importance of in person education for the ones who need to fill literacy gaps. Thus, #Tear has brought to light  some challenges for basic education in Brazil, bearing in mind, among other ones,  teaching practices,  public policies, decolonial perspectives, human rights, as well as connections between what is established and practised for Basic Education. 

Organizers: Prof. Dr. Juliana Carvalho Pereira (Prefeitura Municipal de Cachoeirinha), Dr. Filipe Xerxeneski da Silveira (IFRS) and Prof. Dr. Maria do Rocio Fontoura Teixeira (UFRGS).   Cover photo*:   Courtesy of Juliana Bublitz (personal archive)   *Originally published in the article "O mundo pode tudo": a resiliência das crianças que perderam a casa na enchente (GZH, May 18, 2024).  With this, #Tear seeks to pay tribute to all the people - and especially primary school students - affected by the flood that hit the state of Rio Grande do Sul in the first semester of 2024.   Translated with DeepL.com (free version)