SEIS DÉCADAS DE UM PROJETO DE PLENA DEMOCRATIZAÇÃO

REATUALIZANDO A ATUALIDADE BRASILEIRA COM PAULO FREIRE1

Abstract

This paper presents a contextual and refreshed analysis of the book Educação e atualidade brasileira (Brazilian education and currentness), written by Paulo Freire in 1959, in which the author demonstrates how the contrast between the “democratic inexperience” and the “people return to the national public life” formed the fundamental antinomy of the Brazil “in developing”. Through 1 Texto originalmente publicado na Revista de Educação da Faculdade de Educação da Univer-sidade Federal de Minas Gerais: Educação em Revista, Belo Horizonte, v. 36, e233695, 2020. Disponível em , acesso em 17 de dezembro de 2020. a historical retrospect, he points out, in Brazil formation, the beginning of the Brazilians’ anti-democratic mental dispositions and the processes in which these dispositions perpetuated themselves. Detecting at the end of 50’s the propitious circumstances for the participative and critical insertion of people in the decision national processes, the author supports the necessity of forming women and men to democratic life, the role of an education that needed of a full revision. Considering the specificities of each moment, Freire’s reflections enlighten the current context, support the problematization of its antinomies and reveals the paths in which it is possible to build education to social justice.