A construção da dimensão pública na escola estatal brasileira

Abstract

This research presents a bibliographic review to identify the multiple meanings attributed to the terms public and public school in diverse historical contexts. The aim of this study is to understand the conditions in which the public dimension is manifest in the State school. Based on the concept of republicanism as presented in the works of Cicero, Machiavelli, and more recently, John Dewey, Hannah Arendt and Jünger Habermas, this thesis searches the elements that make possible the building of a public dimension: communication, participation in political and civil life, democracy. The outcome of this study finds that the polarization of the concepts of public and private is not enough to understand the complex relations in which they are involved. Described as the opposite of a state of domination and subservience, the public is defined as the result of a process of identification of common and shared interests, as determined by communication among people and institutions. When broad and long-term, these interests affect other people until then not directly involved who start to acknowledge them. This thesis finds that, given the impossibility of a single, totalizing common interest, various publics take form and are deconstructed, without necessarily being limited within the confines of the State. The analysis examines general factors that hinder the constitution of a public, such as the influence of bureaucracy and of neo-conservative policies, as well as factors more particular to the Brazilian society, including patronage relationships and extreme social inequality. These factors, also verified through empirical research, take on specific forms in social relationships within the school. The thesis shows that inconstant granting of political rights, the denial of civil rights to a large portion of the Brazilian population, and the precarious implementation of social rights such as schooling result in a fragile citizenship. Nonetheless, this indicates the possibility of building the public dimension in State schools through the revitalization of political life and of currently eclipsed public spaces, as well as through the creation of new spaces. In this sense, civic virtue serves as the basis for the promotion of more democratic relationships and for a viable active citizenship in which people enjoy not only their attained rights, but also those that ought to be.