The advance of the militarisation of brazilian public schools

authoritarianism and silencing x democracy and reflection

Abstract

This paper seeks to reflect on the advance of militarization in Brazilian education, focusing mainly on Civic-Military Schools (Ecim). In this way, we seek to ponder the implications of this process on students lives, the school and society. To accomplish this, we considered acts, plans and official documents related to the subject and mapped articles, papers and thesis that provided us with important clues to further our debate and also pointed out what has already been produced about this subject. Additionally, to support this reflection we rely on studies by education and culture researchers, such as: Paulo Freire (1985, 1996, 2005, 2007, 2008), Adorno (1995, 2019), Foucault (2014), Spivak (2010), among others. With the studies already conducted, many signs pointed out the violence reduction and improvement of school performance fallacy as justifications for the imposition of Ecim in the Brazilian territory. This has been proved as the militarization, in a violent way, has been shaping subjectivities, silencing subjects through the disciplinary methodology, which is authoritarian and hierarchical, that nullifies the word, the culture, the knowledge of the other. This process translates its neoliberal, market and control logic, thus impairing the democratic and self-reflexive environment that, while being an emancipating act, helps to construct subjects and not objects/parts of a machine. Lastly, we reinforce the importance of further study-research, in order to, in fact, reflect on what education, students, and society we want. Whether we want a school or barracks.

[Received on: May 21, 2021 - Accepted on: June 18, 2021]