O livro de leituras "Viver é lutar" (1963): uma problematização sobre a dignidade humana como prática de Educação em Direitos humanos

Abstract

Taking as its object of study the reading book “Viver é lutar” of the Movimento de Educação de Base (MEB), understood as a didactic material characterized by the expression of dignity within the context of the 1960s, this research aimed to analyze the reading book as a “instrument of Rights,” problematizing the notion of human dignity present in its lessons and iconographies in the context of 1963. The methodological paths adopted included bibliographic, documentary, and iconographic approaches, grounded in discourse analysis as the central method. The proposed analyses are based on the contributions of the following authors: Le Goff (2003), Sharpe (1992), Ventura (2001), Santos (2014), Alves and Tonnetti (2021), Freire (1989), among others. In terms of recalling the movement, it is important to emphasize that the educational proposals of the MEB in the 1960s, stemming from Catholic initiatives, moved toward the emancipation of the popular classes and marked a period in which the government of the time, under President João Goulart, and the clergy aligned their interests with social issues, thereby seeking to direct educational policies and practices in favor of subalternized populations. The MEB and its didactic material thus mark the history of the 1960s by giving concrete form to an educational proposal concerned with the construction of civic consciousness and, consequently, with a politics directed toward subjects, making it possible to envision that, through this bond, dignity and other rights could be achieved. Thus, in the reading book, the verb “to hope” (esperançar), as Paulo Freire (1989) aptly reminds us, is structured through portrayals and lessons that enabled the worker, the protagonist of the MEB, to recognize his condition as an exploited subject and, from that recognition, to struggle for the conquest of his rights. This study seeks to enable present and future generations to recall moments in which education, in its liberating form, allowed workers to recognize themselves as an exploited class, to understand the importance of claiming their rights, and, furthermore, to encourage them to feel the desire to engage in the struggle against the erasure of these memories, for remembering, and, consequently, resisting, can be understood as revolutionary acts.