Educação e emancipação: uma análise sobre a perspectiva revolucionária das “Escolas de Libertação” do Partido dos Panteras Negras para Autodefesa

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the experience of the Black Panthers Party for Self-Defense in terms of its educational praxis based on the so-called Liberation Schools created by the party. A revolutionary black American organization, with a Marxist-Leninist alignment, acted, with more or less strength, between the years 1966 and 1982 and, during all this period, kept education as an agenda of struggle and an element of its praxis. Therefore, the goal is to understand the role of education implemented by the Panthers in the face of their political and social project. In this sense, the research is directly related to studies about education and emancipation processes, which are fundamental to the understanding of our times, marked by the increase of inequalities, worsening of violence and oppression, as well as the mystification of reality. Facing this scenario and without, however, disregarding the particularities of each time and of the subjects involved, we have investigated, in the PPN experience, a possible revolutionary perspective of education that contributes to the present times. Given the potential and the complexity of the organization, we sought, through immanent reading and analysis, to understand the contexts and factors that led to the Party's existence and to the implementation of its schools. The historical-materialistic perspective was used to understand the material reality in its historicity in order to elucidate the factors that motivated and made possible the existence of the Party and its actions in the educational field. To this end, a predominantly qualitative research was carried out, by means of literature review, document and iconographic analysis. The material analyzed allowed us to deduce the historical ballast of social inequality, oppression, racial segregation, and violence in American society and its direct impacts on the school education of oppressed subjects. Regarding the Liberation Schools, it was possible to infer that they had as their horizon more than the schooling of their subjects; they aimed at an education that would effectively contribute to the overcoming of the capitalist production mode. The research showed that the education implemented by the Party, whether in Liberation Schools or in the direct training of its militants, was not free of contradictions, advances, and setbacks in relation to the proposed goals. The fact that the PPN sought to implement a revolutionary education, aimed at the effective emancipation of the oppressed subjects, did not prevent it from being impacted by the prevailing mode of production. However, despite the end of the Party and, consequently, of its actions in the field of education, we believe that, in face of the repeated efforts of the capital's mode of production to spend means and resources to guarantee the erasure and silencing of the struggles led by the oppressed classes, this experience in the educational field can also contribute to think about ways and actions to overcome capitalism and shed light on the complex problem of the transition to a new social order.