{"id":1565,"date":"2012-02-08T13:32:55","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T17:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2012-02-08T13:32:55","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T17:32:55","slug":"philosophy-as-civic-education-in-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/2012\/02\/08\/philosophy-as-civic-education-in-brazil\/","title":{"rendered":"Philosophy as civic education in Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Erin McDonagh (Core ’08, CAS ’10), a member of the EnCore steering committee, writes:<\/em><\/p>\n

In this article<\/a> by Carlos Fraenkel of Boston Review<\/em>, we learn that Brazil\u2019s public education policy has surprising stipulation: According to a 2008 law, students are required to study philosophy for three years in high school. The law is a political reaction against the country\u2019s recent history: \u201cThe official rationale\u2026is that philosophy \u2018is necessary for the exercise of citizenship,\u2019\u201d and from 1971-1985, the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil outlawed philosophy, replacing it with classes on citizenship and loyalty to the state. The military leaders seem to have recognized something Core students are taught: that studying philosophy creates an endless chain of questions about freedom, enlightenment, equality, reason, and justice, all principles alien to an autocratic regime. Brazil\u2019s relatively new democracy and its public education have taken active resistance against creating the conditions for such a regime, teaching students to ask these questions about the world around them.<\/p>\n

The article (warning: it\u2019s a bit lengthy) goes farther, questioning the implementation, wisdom, and principles of this new practice. Almira Ribiero, a philosophy teacher in a poor, violent, and racially segregated neighborhood in Salvador, insists that students come out of the cave, learn about the world, and then bring those lessons back down before the fire and apply them. She believes, as do other supporters of the 2008 law, that teaching students about what justice and democracy mean will help them to become more engaged citizens, and that examining reason and fairness will help them work toward a clearer idea of equality. This is part of the Core mission: by examining why<\/em> we do things, discussing the basis for our mores and morals, and trying to live what Socrates called an examined life, we make better choices for ourselves and for others.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Almira<\/a>

Almira Ribeiro teaching her students in Itapu\u00e3, Bahia, Brazil (Image copyright Claudionor Jr. Ascom \/ SEC)<\/p><\/div>\n

Other Brazilians, including many academics, are not so sure. They don\u2019t believe that all students can be made to understand\u00a0 Kant, Socrates, or Hume, or that everyone can make theirs an examined life. \u201cTo make them question the beliefs and customs they were brought up in isn\u2019t useful because they can\u2019t replace them with examined ones,\u201d Fraenkel explains, a point applicable in Athens or in Salvador. \u201cSo Socrates ended up pushing [Athenian citizens] into nihilism,\u201d and nihilists do not make engaged citizens. The students in Ms. Ribiero\u2019s class disagree. They protested to Fraenkel that \u201cif you can\u2019t establish a just society democratically without the citizens knowing what justice is, and if you can\u2019t know what justice is without philosophy, it would be impossible to achieve justice in an unjust society like Brazil if studying philosophy presupposes justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Core students are self-selected to attempt the examined life: we sign up for the program and continue in it for two years knowing that we will be asked questions with no correct answer. Students in Brazil are not given a choice, but does that make them unequal to the task? Fraenkel relates an engaging and enlightening discussion from his day with the students, and examines the role philosophy plays in building up this new society. Core lasts only for two years, and sends students on to a wide variety of disciplines; how to we, in our more solidly established system, bring Plato\u2019s lessons back to our own cave?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Erin McDonagh (Core ’08, CAS ’10), a member of the EnCore steering committee, writes: In this article by Carlos Fraenkel of Boston Review, we learn that Brazil\u2019s public education policy has surprising stipulation: According to a 2008 law, students are required to study philosophy for three years in high school. The law is a political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1284,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7464,4854,4261],"tags":[586,48737,7465,437,4218,4220,1935],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1567,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions\/1567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}