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In: Michel Vandenbroeck (Ed.) Revisiting Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of

the Oppressed. Issues and Challenges in Early Childhood Education.
London and New York (2021)
3 A Freirian view of early childhood education in Portugal
A complicit response to Michel Vandenbroeck’s Introduction
Augusto Pinheiro

Introduction

In this chapter I will explore some aspects of Paulo Freire’s philosophy of education which are
sound inspirations for early childhood education in general and more specifically, in the
Portuguese cultural context. Even if Freire was never expressly concerned with childhood, his
analysis on educational principles of the oppressed are very accurate for early childhood
education, namely in countries such as Portugal, where children remain an extremely oppressed
social group. Moreover, Pedagogy of the Oppressed has a sufficiently comprehensive character
allowing us to make sound considerations about the appropriateness of Freire’s pedagogical
principles to early childhood education, as is exemplified in the very dedication of this seminal
work: To the oppressed, and to those who suffer with them and fight at their side.
In line with Michel Vandenbroeck, and according to Freire’s strong convictions, I will reiterate
the impossibility of a neutral, non-compromised, apolitical educational practice. I will stress
the necessary educational orientation towards a political implicated intentionality which is in
clear rupture with any arbitrary impositions. I will assume as clearly as I can my political
positions, i.e., my commitment with the radical interpretations that emerge from two “theories
of suspicion”, the Marxist theory and some trends of politically implicated psychoanalysis (e.g.
the so called Fourth Group). Besides and consequently, I became aware that I needed to suggest
a non-foundationalist manner to avoid postmodernist fallacies and contradictions, questioning
the sacrosanct moral relativism.
Such a position draws upon Hans-George Gadamer’s (2006) dialogical mode of understanding
the problem of truth, as genuine dialogue, which depends on the sincerity of the opponents, as
well as on his idea of good will, not aiming to confirm one’s position about a specific subject
matter, but taking into account possible truths. Nevertheless, I will modulate this apparently
radical relativism, exploring both Jurgen Habermas’s ethics of discussion and Charles Taylor’s
political philosophy on that issue. This will help my refutation of a nobody’s theory,
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challenging some post-foundationalist trends which consider the equal validity of every
opinion about whatever matter. Besides, by converging to some extent with Vandenbroeck’s
positions, and by drawing on Martin Heidegger’s (2001), John Bowden’s & Ference Marton’s
(1998) approaches, I will make some critical comments on an unfortunate and paradoxical
Portuguese tendency that characterises childhood education and teacher’s education, i.e., the
quality quantification of both, curricula and teachers’ educational settings. Concomitantly, I
will also comment on the overwhelming competency-based movement which invades
educational speech and practices. Based on Freire and Alice Miller’s (1983) denunciation of
physical punishment, I will further explore the political dimensions of Portuguese early
childhood education. Moreover, I will explicitly stress Portuguese children’s exposure to
violent disciplinary methods they endure. I will close this chapter with some clumsy comments
on hope and despair.

A non-foundationalist attempt to avoid postmodernist fallacies and contradictions

Terry Eagleton exposed the weaknesses of postmodern thinking ascribed to the meaning of
History, reducing it to “a matter of constant mutability, exhilaratingly multiple and open-ended,
a set of conjunctures or discontinuities which only some theoretical violence could hammer
into the unity of a single narrative” (2003: 46). Stressing how these propositions inevitably led
to implausible extremes, Eagleton unveils the trap such proposals entail: “The impulse to
historicise capsizes into its opposite: pressed to the point where continuities simply dissolve,
history becomes no more than a galaxy of current conjunctures, a cluster of eternal presents,
which is to say hardly history at all” (idem).
Eagleton refutes the relativistic ideology, drawing attention to some unifying universalities that
are rooted in biological facts: “If another creature is able in principle to speak to us, engage in
material labour alongside us, sexually interact with us, produce something which looks vaguely
like art in the sense that it appears fairly pointless, suffer, joke and die, then we can deduct
from these biological facts a huge number of moral and even political consequences. This, at
least, is one sense in which we can derive values from facts” (idem: 47).
Should we develop a reliable analysis of education in general and, more specifically, should
we discuss early childhood education from an anti-foundationalist position? Is it even possible?
Besides, should we contribute to this fashionable futility of abstract discussions of universalism
versus relativism? I do not have definite answers for these questions, but it seems prudent to
not engage in educational analysis with such intent. Indeed, relativism seems to me a very
slippery way of analysing educational problematics, once the true cornerstones of education
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process, an eminently communitarian endeavour, are its ethics and its political aspects. So,
instead of letting ourselves be enthused by these scholarly charms, it seems better to pay close
attention to Eagleton’s warnings concerning postmodernism: “at its least appealing, […]
postmodernism presses the communitarian standpoint towards a lopsided culturalism moral
relativism and hostility to universals, in contrast to a socialism which shares with that
standpoint its more positive values of community, historicity and relationality” (idem: 86).
Taylor analysed the moral principles of western contemporary society, describing its main
features as a culture of authenticity. This culture is guided by values which lead people to
search one’s truth, i.e., to seek their own self-fulfilment, which he named “the individualism
of self-fulfilment” (cf. 1991: 14) grounded on “the ideal of ‘authenticity’” (1994: 28). Claiming
that “the relativism widely espoused today is a profound mistake, even in some respects self-
stultifying” (1991: 15), Taylor suspects “that the culture of self-fulfilment has led many people
to lose sight of concerns that transcend them, [taking] trivialized and self-indulgent forms”
(idem). The probable result of such a position is “a sort of absurdity, as new modes of
conformity arise among people who are striving to be themselves, [as well as], new forms of
dependence” (idem). Doubting the essential aspects of their identities and dismissing the quest
for their lives’ meaning, “people turn to all sorts of self-appointed experts and guides, shrouded
with the prestige of science or some exotic spirituality” (idem). In a similar vein, and in other
words, Eagleton sustains that nowadays, the meaning of life question is the responsibility of
“gurus and spiritual masseurs”, those “technologists of piped contentment, and chiropractors
of the psyche” (2008: 24). Eagleton interprets this desolated and misguided attempt to ascribe
a kernel of meaning to human existence in contemporaneous western societies as the result of
post-structuralism and then a postmodern tendency to dismiss “all attempts to reflect on human
life as a whole as disreputably ‘humanist’, or […] as the kind of ‘totalising’ theory which led
straight to the death camps of the totalitarian state” (idem: 20). Instead of conceiving an eluding
humanity, or even a human life, postmodernism only considers simple differences, specific
cultures, local situations (cf. idem: 16). Actually, life becomes “a discredited totality” (idem:
16) within this intellectual landscape, characterised by “the pragmatist streetwise climate of
advanced postmodern capitalism, with its scepticism of big pictures and grand narratives, its
hard-nosed disenchantment with the metaphysical,” (idem).
On one hand, Charles Taylor tried to recognise historical and cultural differences of ethical
principles, in order to establish a dialogue, which allows us to escape the straightjacket
imprisonment of the fictitious universality of ethnocentric positions. On the other hand, he
avoided the blindness resulting from radical and simplistic forms of relativism. Seemingly, this
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relativism is partly based on a principle of mutual respect. Besides, as Taylor claims, such a
relativism is an “offshoot of a form of individualism” which the author enounced as follows:
“everyone has a right to develop their own form of life, grounded on their own sense of what
is really important or of value” (cf. 1991: 14), which implies the existence of a plurality of
meanings of life, depending on each personal trend. Nevertheless, as Eagleton stresses,
“pluralism has his limits, in the sense […] that if there is such a thing as the meaning of life, it
cannot be different for each of us” (2008: 30). In a broader sense, Eagleton adds, “meaning
cannot just be whatever I decide” (idem). In a later text, discussing the two apparent
incompatible positions about meaning, which would be either inherent or constructed, Eagleton
suggests an alternative position that does not dismiss any of those extreme positions: “meaning
[…] is something people do; but they do it in dialogue with a determinate world whose laws
they did not invent, and if their meanings are to be valid, they must respect this world’s grain
and texture” (idem: 71). In an analogous vein, taking his distances from both subjectivist and
objectivist positions, Freire sought an understanding of the “constant dialectical relationship”
(2005: 50) between these two apparently incompatible stances. By deepening this particular
dialectical connection and remembering that Marx’s propositions never denied subjectivity,
but subjectivism as a paralysing position, i.e., as an obstruction to changing the world (idem:
50 & 51), Freire recognised the need to elaborate a thought that takes precisely into account
the unavoidable contingencies of the world with humans in the following terms:

To deny the importance of subjectivity in the process of transforming the world and
history is naive and simplistic. It is to admit the impossible: a world without people.
This objectivistic position is as ingenuous as that of subjectivism, which postulates
people without a world. World and human beings do not exist apart from each other,
they exist in constant interaction. (idem: 50)

Similarly, even a radical anti-foundationalist such as Merleau-Ponty, tried to overcome one of

the modern western philosophy’s major problems, i.e. the duality subject–object. Considering
the flesh as this “ultimate notion”, which is “thinkable by itself” and not the unification of two
constituents, Merleau-Ponty tried to overcome the apparent conflict between those instances,
stressing its circular dynamism: “a relation of the visible with itself that traverses me and
constitutes me as a seer, this circle which I do not form, which forms me, this coiling over of
the visible upon the visible, can traverse, animate other bodies as well as my own” (Merleau-
Ponty, 1968: 140). Subsequently, he draws the following speculation: “if I was able to
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understand how this wave arises within me, how the visible which is yonder is simultaneously
my landscape, I can understand a fortiori that elsewhere it also closes over upon itself and that
there are other landscapes besides my own” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968: 140–141). This uncertain
character of boundaries between the object and the subject1 is a central feature of Merleau-
Ponty’s way of thinking, just as Gary Brent Madison stresses: “the exact significance of his
philosophy, which in his life was called both a philosophy of ambiguity and an ambiguous
philosophy, retains to this day its essential ambiguity (Madison, 1995 / 1999: 558). While
incorporating his objections against universalistic conceptions concerning morality, namely the
contemporary ethical culturalism/contextualism, Habermas suggested a way beyond the
“sterile opposition between abstract universalism and a self-contradictory relativism,
[proposing] to defend the primacy of the just (in the deontological sense) over the good” (2001:
VII). Developing his remarks on discourse ethics, Habermas sustained an incontrovertible need
of a just context for a valid and fruitful argumentation in the following terms: “anyone who
seriously engages in argumentation must presuppose that the context of discussion guarantees
in principle freedom of access, equal rights to participate, truthfulness on the part of
participants, absence of coercion in adopting positions, and so on” (idem: 31). Furthermore, he
added the conditions of convincing argumentation: “If the participants genuinely want to
convince one another, they must make the pragmatic assumption that they allow their ‘yes’ and
‘no’ responses to be influenced solely by the force of the better argument” (idem). “Finally,
Habermas adds, perhaps the better argument is the conceivable truth, the possible truth in a
dialogical situation” (idem).

Towards a hermeneutic sense of truth

Quoting Hegel literally, Guy Debord, remembered that, “truth is not like some finished product
in which one can no longer find any trace of the tool that made it” (2014: 109), and he added
that “this theoretical consciousness of a movement whose traces must remain visible within it
is manifested by the reversal of established relationships between concepts and by the
détournement of all the achievements of earlier critical efforts” (idem). Subsequently, taking
upside down (applying that détournement) another Hegel’s formula, Guy Debord described the
falsity of capitalist society from the mid-twentieth century till the present day, as follows: “In
a world that has really been turned upside down, the true is a moment of the false” (Debord,

1
Portuguese language allows the construction of a particularly interesting formula, [SujeitObjecto],
(Pereira, 1990b), insofar as the continuity between subject and object [“sujeito” and “objeto”] can be expressed
through the elision, or rather the merger of the final “o” of “sujeito” with the initial “o” of “objeto”.
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2014: 206). I suspect that Debord himself would be astonished with the accuracy of his words
in this twenty-first century. Reality surpasses his analysis that was viewed as excessive.
I am convinced that, as intellectual workers, it is our duty to raise Michel Vandenbroeck’s
question: “what can be the meaning of the critique of the alleged objectivity of facts and figures
as the ultimate way of understanding the world and giving meaning to it, in an era when a
president of the U.S. won the elections, despite many declarations that proved to be false or the
British people voted to leave the European Union, after being confronted with false
arguments?” (see introduction). Indeed, we need much courage to respond to that question,
perhaps because everyone’s answers will be insufficiently neat and politically unsatisfying and
inconclusive. Nevertheless, in the following pages of this section, I will try to sketch an answer
in a somewhat fuzzy manner (the only way I am able to), at the risk of not being able to respond
to such a demanding challenge.
As an attempt of trying to avoid moral relativism and questioning the meaning of truth,
Gadamer deepened the Hegelian position concerning the key aim of dialectical thinking, which
consists in “making the abstract determinations of thought fluid and subtle” (2006: 263).
Following, Gadamer praised the Hegelian task which included the hard work of “dissolving
and remoulding logic into concrete language, and transforming the concept into the meaningful
power of the word that questions and answers” (idem). With an undisguised bitterness and
disenchantment, Gadamer added that this Hegelian task of revitalising language is “a
magnificent reminder, even if unsuccessful, of what dialectic really was and is” (idem). In this
context, and according to Gadamer, “Hegel’s dialectic is a monologue of thinking that tries to
carry out in advance what matures little by little in every genuine dialogue” (idem), and “in
genuine dialogue, something emerges that is contained in neither of the partners by himself”
(idem: 458). Gadamer’s concept of horizon, as well as the correlated expressions “fusion of
horizons” and “horizon-formation” belongs to “the universal hermeneutic process”. This
process is a central theoretical tool which seems unavoidable to question effectively the
problem of truth, time and history. Such a problematic implies a reflexion on bias resulting
from the prejudices of each historical epoch, these issues that relativists cherish so eagerly. Yet,
instead of devaluating preconceptions, Gadamer stresses that “the horizon of the present is
continually in the process of being formed because we are continually having to test all our
prejudices” (2006: 305), and such a statement emphases the value of this testing, once “it occurs
in encountering the past and in understanding the tradition from which we come”, a necessary
condition to form “the horizon of the present [which] cannot be formed without the past”
(idem). This implies that it is impossible to conceive both, an “isolated horizon of the present”,
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or “historical horizons which have to be acquired”. Instead, the process of “understanding is

always the fusion of these horizons supposedly existing by themselves”. Consequently, “in a
tradition this process of fusion is continually going on, for there, old and new are always
combining into something of living value, without either being explicitly foregrounded from
the other” (idem: 305). Consequently, someone producing any text or utterance “co-determines
its meaning, that is, the way it speaks to us” (idem: 578). Clarifying further the sense of this
central conceptual expression (“fusion of horizons”), Gadamer points out that this is “precisely
the point of historically effected consciousness: to think the work and its effect as a unity of
meaning”. Extending these clarifying comments, Gadamer insists in the unity character of such
a dynamic process of co-construction of meaning: “What I described as the fusion of horizons
was the form in which this unity actualizes itself, which does not allow the interpreter to speak
of an original meaning of [any] work without acknowledging that, in understanding it, the
interpreter’s own meaning enters in as well” (idem). The main intentionality of the precedent
comments has been to clarify my, somewhat tricky position, regarding those epistemological
and ontological issues which seem to overshadow today’s critical thinking. This will help me
to ground my comments that are decidedly marked by ethical and political judgements that I
will use along the following global (although very incomplete) outline of the socio-historical
circumstances. By doing this, I hope to help the comprehension of the critical analysis I will
present in later sections of this chapter.

A very brief and sparse socio-historical contextualisation of Portuguese society

For almost half a century, Portugal was ruled by dictatorship regimes: the so called “National
Dictatorship” (1926–1933), followed by the “New State”, the euphemistic expression by which
Salazar and Marcello Caetano (1933–1974) designated their dictatorship. This Portuguese
regime led to a colonial war, in addition to everything implied in this dictatorship, i.e., the
political police with 3,600 officers; the closed censorship of every media, of every newspaper
or book edition, of every show, and of every cultural event. From 1961 until 1974, the colonial
war against the liberation movements of three African colonies (Guinea Bissau, Angola and
Mozambique) devastated the youth of both Portugal and those African countries. During these
13 years of war, in a country with less than 10 million inhabitants, almost 9000 Portuguese
militaries died, 100,000 were injured, among which 14,000 were permanently physically
handicapped, and more than 140,000 suffered from post-traumatic stress disorders (cf.
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Brandão, 2008).2 Besides, the financial military cost was on average 33 percent, attaining in
the mid 1960s more than 40 percent of the total state expenditure (Ferraz, 2019). Inversely,
during these years of war, less than 5 percent of the total state expenditure was allocated to
education (idem), in a country whose rates of elementary school attendance in the last year of
dictatorship (1974) were lower than 80 percent (Mata & Carvalho, 2009), and one in four
Portuguese citizens were illiterate (25 percent). According to Salazar, Portugal needed to
follow the motto “God, Homeland and Family” (Deus, Pátria e Família). Portuguese families
living in rural areas were idealised by the dictator, those “privileged places for living and
worshiping the moral virtues” (Pereira, 2013). Consequently, Salazar sought to discourage
rural exodus into urban areas which in his mind, were concomitant with “unemployment,
individualism and the dissolution of customs” (idem), and worse, these aspects were related to
communism, a real obsession of Salazar, to whom development entailed the great danger of a
proletariat’s advent. Concurrently, in his view, ignorance meant happiness. Supposedly, his
aim of maintaining Portuguese people uncultured was a political decision of keeping
Portuguese people happy. In reality, that ignorance was cultivated with the interest of
sustaining the regime (cf. Coelho, 2015). Not surprisingly, at the end of Salazar’s regime
(1974), the majority of Portuguese people had not concluded primary education, and their
functional mastery of reading and writing was extremely low. However, the real function of
Salazar’s school had been accomplished as a means for indoctrinating most public workers
within the ideology of the New State, in order to maintain the regime.
In 1974, a coup d’état led by the captains of the colonial army finished both the dictatorship
and the colonial war. This was followed by an interesting and creative period of a year and a
half,3 when several citizens’ associations organised with soldiers developed a popular
educational project encompassing a multiplicity of initiatives, cultural activities, creation of
theatre companies, sports associations, and alphabetisation campaigns throughout the country
that were very much inspired by Freire’s ideas. Indeed, literacy was viewed by those citizens’
associations as a collective search of a meaning for life, for “conscientização” of those illiterate
peasants, freeing themselves from dictatorship oppression. Literacy was a decisive tool to
organise and deepen the agrarian reform4 one of the major achievements of the “Carnation
Revolution” (cf. Marie, 2017).

2
Among Africans, there was no accounting of victims, but certainly the number is much higher.
3
In November 1975, some right-wing army officers put an end on the popular movement by means of a
kind of counter coup d’état.
4
During dictatorship, more than half the land was owned by landlords who exploited the rural workers within a
landowner system.
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Portugal became a member of the European Union in 1986, and Portuguese administrations
undertook significant efforts improving several societal aspects. During the following decades,
great efforts were made by governments in order to achieve European goals in several societal
aspects, namely in education,5 as well as in health, by the creation of a national health system,
which allowed several major improvements, for example, a drastic reduction of infant
mortality.6
In the realm of the 2008 global banking crisis, for 4 years (2011–2015), an extreme neo-liberal
government managed Portugal and led to surpassing the disastrous demands of the European
Commission, the Central European Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Those demands
seemed to be grounded on the faith in free competition and were erected as constitutional
principles of the European Union. The Portuguese government compliance and overtaking of
such demands resulted in a serious regression in many socio-economic aspects, destroying
existing labour laws, increasing unemployment, impoverishing the middle class, and greatly
increasing the emigration of many young people belonging to the most educated generation in
Portuguese history. After the financial crisis, for the past 4 years, Portugal has progressively
become a fashionable country, having won the World Travel Awards in 2017 and 2018, and
being considered the World’s Leading Destination. In a dangerous world, Portugal has been
rated by the Global Peace Index 2019 the third most secure country in the world.7 In what
concerns the economic and political aspects, in the last 4 years, Portugal attained a relatively
low unemployed rate, below 7 percent, when this rate is 1 percent higher (on average) in the
countries belonging to the Euro Zone. Besides, Portugal is viewed as a good example by the
European Commission in areas such as environmental eco-innovation,8 which is above the
average of the 28 European countries. One could multiply the examples of favourable
indicators, which mainly reflect the progress made since 1974. Nevertheless, one may be aware
that Portugal has a severe delay when compared with other countries of the European Union.
This delay is obviously related to half a century of dictatorship guided by the mind of a tyrant
who wanted the Portuguese to remain ignorant, in order to protect them from communism.
Moreover, Portugal belongs to Europe’s geographic peripheral countries, with all that follows.

5
In 2015 the alphabetisation rate was above 96 percent.
6
In 1974 it was 40 per thousand, and currently it is almost null.
7
Institute for Economics & Peace. Global Peace Index 2019: Measuring Peace in a Complex World.
Sydney: June 2019. Available from: http://visionofhumanity.org/reports (accessed in June 2019).
8
Eco-Innovation Index, In The Environmental Implementation Review. Brussels, 2019.
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/eir/pdf/report_pt_en.pdf
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I will now present in a few paragraphs some episodes of violence against children in Portuguese
nurseries, (day care centres) and kindergartens, a situation that I consider endemic to
Portuguese society and which, it seems to be believed, has roots in the culture established in
Portugal for half a century of dictatorship. In that period early childhood education was just
vestigial, the number of children attending such institutions was really tiny. Nevertheless, the
pre-school teachers had the same violent methods as primary teachers. The model was one of
submission and oppression, and as Freire stressed, every relationship that involves violence is
characterised by an illegitimate power because it dehumanises the very relationship between
people. In his view, the dehumanised relationship is marked by domination “domination,
exploitation, oppression, [and thus, it] is in itself already violent, whether it is done by drastic
means or not” (Freire, 1967: 49). Besides, this kind of relationship “is, at the same time,
unloving and a hindrance to love” (idem), and that means, the reverse of education, the opposite
of dialogical relationship.

Violence against children: A Portuguese cultural issue

During an interview conducted in 1926 by the director of the Nacional Propaganda Service,
answering a question about torture inflicted by political police officers to opponents to the
dictatorship, Salazar stated: “I ask myself […] if the lives of some children and some
defenceless people are not worth well, does not justify, half a dozen slaps in the right moment
onto these sinister creatures”. This euphemistic expression (half a dozen slaps) became a
proverbial ironic expression among militants resistant against Salazar’s dictatorship to
designate the extremely harsh torture techniques of the political police (cf. Madeira et al.,
2007). Not surprisingly, for decades, teachers used to spank children with several devices (such
as rulers with holes,9 paddling10). These violent acts were accepted (read it legal) practices
during half a century of dictatorship. Daniel Lemos, in a study concerning the meaning of
physical punishment in schools of the nineteenth century, describes “corporal punishment in
primary schools as a form of discipline, establishing and consolidating a particular school
culture, understood as a set of norms, attitudes and behaviors imposed on young people as a
way to obtain a disciplining of body and spirit” (2012: 627). Lemos’s considerations about
nineteenth-century schools were adequate to Portuguese schools during dictatorship, and
partially, they still are.

9
To produce higher pain.
10
The paddling, considers Lemos (2012) was an object that just as the book, table, pen, marked their
presence at school and in the imagination of society about the school.
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This reminds us of Freire’s analysis of the perverted pleasure of domination, exactly the
opposite that suits education, i.e. love, in his ancient Greek word (agapé) which, differently
from Eros, meant a non-eroticised love. Freire denounced domination, which “reveals the
pathology of love: sadism in the dominator and masochism in the dominated” (2005: 89).
Consequently, Freire highlighted the virtue of the kind of love needed to the success of
educational processes, considering love as “an act of courage, not of fear” implying a
“commitment to others”. Subsequently, Freire stated the following principle which applies
completely to childhood education: “No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love
is commitment to their cause—the cause of liberation” (idem). On several occasions, Freire
stressed the dialogical character of such a loving commitment (cf. e.g. idem). It is obvious that
most of these were clearly missing in schools of the Salazar dictatorship, and, although the
Salazarist regime ended 45 years ago, even nowadays, they are still missing. After the
revolution of 1974, physical punishments seemed to decrease significantly. Nowadays,
however, such practices still remain frequent, although seemingly such punishments became
less frequent and generally less brutal. In 2007, torture against children was denounced by the
World Organisation Against Torture who lodged a collective complaint against the Portuguese
state “on the grounds that the law, as interpreted by the Portugal’s Highest Court [Supremo
Tribunal de Justiça], tolerates corporal punishment”.11 Consequently, the European Council
condemned Portugal for violating children’s rights after the Supreme Court of Justice (STJ)
considered some corporal punishment inflicted in an institution for children and young people
with disabilities to be “lawful” and “acceptable”.12 Indeed, the European Committee of Social
Rights of the European Council unanimously concluded that Portugal had violated Article 17
of the European Social Charter, which enshrines “the right of children and young persons to
social, legal and economic protection”.13 Moreover, The Committee considered that the clauses
of the Portuguese legislation on this subject were not sufficiently “clear, binding and precise”
to prevent courts from refusing their application, recommending that measures should be taken
to ensure that such violence is “effectively eliminated”. Additionally, the Committee points out
the fact that the Portuguese Government had not provided information to show that the
measures in force are sufficient to eradicate all forms of violence against children. Therefore,

11
Link: http://www.omct.org/rights-of-the-child/urgent-interventions/portugal/2007/05/d18657/
12

Link:http://www.dgsi.pt/jstj.nsf/954f0ce6ad9dd8b980256b5f003fa814/7b3cde591793c8b18025714d002b118c?OpenDocum
ent
13
cf. European Social Charter (Revised) Strasbourg, 3.V.1996, p. 9.
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a year later, the Portuguese government published a law satisfying the European demands.14
The fact that Portugal is one of 193 countries, including all Council of Europe member states,
that ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, is not a sufficient
guarantee that children are protected from all forms of physical or mental violence while in the
care of parents and others (cf. Article 19).
It is very difficult to know the extent to which the law has changed adults’ violent attitudes
towards children. Statistics are not reliable, since they only reveal a very small percentage of
violence against children. For instance, the Portuguese Association for Victim Support (APAV)
analysed the liability of statistics concerning sexual violence against children and considered
that “the statistical data are always a pale reflection of the global reality of sexual violence
committed against children and young people by revealing a small portion of the phenomenon:
sex crimes reported by victims or other complainants” (APAV, 2011: 57). This warning should
be generalised to statistical data concerning other forms of violence against children, which is
not the case. In fact, I suspect that the circumscription of APAV’s warning to statistics on
sexual violence is part of an attitude of indulgence towards the habit of beating children,
something so rooted within Portuguese culture. Besides, in what concerns children’s sexual
abuse, “the number of crimes of sexual abuse of children/adolescents/dependent minors
registered by the authorities, Portuguese police points to an increase in the number of crimes
detected in recent years: in 2007, 123 cases were registered, while in 2010 the number was
778” (idem: 42).
In addition, Portuguese society is characterised by what we can call a very high density culture,
where everyone knows each other, or somebody in the family, or a friend, or a friend of a
friend, etc. This is a characteristic that works together with a corporatist attitude, in this case,
the corporatist behaviour among teachers, who defend each other, even when they disagree
with their colleagues’ harsh acts against children, such as spanking, insulting or using sarcasm
towards their pupils. These two characteristics, when blended, result in a situation where it is
very improbable that a teacher dares to denounce the crimes committed by colleagues.
Currently, the expression “pedagogical slap” (palmada pedagógica) must be seen as an updated
form of rewording the violence against children. By bleaching these crimes, a number of
professionals who are supposed to protect, care and educate children (judges, teachers,
paediatricians, psychologists, teacher educators, social workers and all kind of “technicians”),
prescribe violence as a means to educate children. Two years ago, a paediatrician, who is the

14
Decreto-Lei n.º 12/2008, de 17 de Janeiro.
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clinical director of the most important Paediatric Hospital in Lisbon, declared to a reputed
weekly newspaper, that children’s tantrum “is a weapon”, suggesting that parents “disarm it”.
According to the journalist’s interpretation, these are occasions when this paediatrician
considers that spanking children is acceptable: “if it is in the ass, with a diaper, it does not hurt,
it is more by surprise, and it has to be done in a way that surprises the child”.15 Safeguarding
the appropriate distances, this seems in line with the sinister remembrance of the Salazarist’s
“slaps in the right moment”.
This kind of observation also reminds Doctor Schreber’s16 advice to parents, in a book written
in 1858: “The little ones’ displays of temper as indicated by screaming or crying without cause
should be regarded as the first test of your spiritual and pedagogical principles […] you should
proceed in a […] positive way, by quickly diverting its attention, by stern words, threatening
gestures, rapping on the bed […] or if none of this helps, by appropriately mild corporal
admonitions repeated persistently at brief intervals until the child quiets down or falls asleep”
(quoted by Alice Miller, 1983).
In this context, and not surprisingly, most people who witness these episodes, look away, tacitly
accepting this social arrangement of dealing with children’s discipline. Frequently, I suspect,
they elude truth, their own truth, in such a way that reminds Eagleton’s critical comments
concerning postmodernist assumptions: “if the system is to survive, truth must be sacrificed to
practice” (2003: 41). This tactical way of ignoring what people witness seams a kind of washing
of hands to show that they are not responsible. Seeming to mention this manner of discarding
responsibility, Eagleton suggests that “perhaps in this respect Pontius Pilate was the first
postmodemist” (idem). Pursuing his critical remarks concerning postmodern ambivalences and
fallacies, Eagleton describes the indigent moral position left to the postmodern subject: “we
stumble on a postmodern subject whose ‘freedom’ consists in a kind of miming of the fact that
there are no longer any foundations at all, and who is therefore at liberty to drift, either
anxiously or deliriously, in a universe which is itself arbitrary, contingent, aleatory” (idem: 41,
42).
In such a context, cultural relativists would possibly argue that this is what it is, i.e., why
criticise Portuguese disciplinary values that, somewhat shamefully, exalt physical punishment
of children. Certainly, the postmodern way of thinking is averse to questions concerning human

15
Carolina Reis, Guia para uma educação feliz, “O Expresso”, 28 May, 2017
https://expresso.pt/sociedade/2017-05-28-Guia-para-uma-educacao-feliz.
16
The father of a paranoid patient described by Freud in his well-known study, “The Schreber Case”. In
the books by Dr. Schreber, which were extremely popular in their epoch, the physical chastisement of infants is
strongly recommended (cf. Miller, 1983).
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rights, justice, freedom and other similar motifs. Eagleton argues that this hostility towards
such questions derives from the fact that these motives “sit uncomfortably with [postmodernist]
nervousness of the ‘autonomous subject’” (2003: 87).
Within the current culturalism which “inflates the importance of what is constructed, coded,
conventional about human life” (Eagleton, 1997), why must we depreciate such disciplinary
habits, constructed along decades, even centuries? How could one dare to criticise those ancient
and consolidated conventions? As I will describe next, it is truly difficult and dangerous to
denounce violence against children within Portuguese society.
To illustrate such violent episodes, here is an example reported to me: about a decade ago,
some students witnessed an everyday situation, where a 2-year-old child, who refused to eat,
was tied to a chair with the sleeves of his gown, and simultaneously, the teacher tightened his
nose, forcing the child to open his mouth to breathe. According to the students, at that moment,
the educator forced him, sticking a spoonful of food inside the child’s mouth. Those students
added that the child immediately vomited out the food that he had been forced to eat, and then
the preschool teacher forced him to eat his vomit using the same technique described above,
while shouting harshly that she was the one who was in charge, and consequently the child had
to obey to her. Understandably shocked, these students stated peremptorily that this situation
was reconciled by all the nursery professionals, including the pedagogical coordinator. These
students were also stunned, since this conduct of the preschool teacher towards the child
contradicted everything they heard from their teachers and read in the books they
recommended. A few days after hearing these students’ testimony, some faculty staff members
ended the internship communicating to the nursery’s pedagogical coordinator that this
interruption was due to that nursery’s flagrant discrepancies between the pedagogical
guidelines and those presided over the training given in that higher education school.
Subsequently, students expressed their intention to file a criminal complaint against both the
educator and the pedagogical coordinator. Welcoming them for their courage, some professors
told them that they would support them in their exemplary initiative. However, a few days later,
these students reported that they had been warned by some of their acquaintances that this
initiative would have negative implications on their careers, since they would encounter
difficulties to work in any early childhood institution in the region. Given these intimidating
recommendations, the students gave up on their intention to file a complaint.
I must insist on the fact that the episode described above is just an example which illustrates
how severe and harsh the mistreatment against children can be. According to what I have been
told, most commonly, the episodes of ill-treatment were less serious, and were mainly
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perpetrated by educational assistants, those professionals who give support to children under
the supervision of a pre-school teacher in charge of a group of children. Generally, I was told,
when students complained to the pre-school teachers in charge of their internship about the
mistreatment from those assistants, these teachers said that they had already warned those
assistants many times but that they could not change their attitudes. Seemingly, those preschool
teachers chose the easiest attitude, i.e., indifference, shrugging their shoulders, resigning from
their responsibilities and becoming accomplices of this ill-treatment, babbling unconvincing
excuses such as, “What am I going to do? They do not change no matter how much I call their
attention”. Although it could be considered unacceptable conduct, this disclaiming behaviour,
this impotent resignation may be understood if we take into account that these educators are
captured by the Portuguese high-density culture and by the concomitant corporate and
nepotistic spirit that prevails in our society. Maybe, to some extent, this can be interpreted using
Freire’s conceptual expression of a “culture of silence”, (1979), this kind of culture being an
expression of a special form of consciousness, “overdetermining” the infrastructure from which
it is created. According to Freire, it is not the dominator who builds a culture and imposes it on
the dominated, once it is the result of dialectical and structural relations between the dominated
and the dominant (idem). Once culture of silence has a close relationship with dependence,
Freire argues that it is necessary to analyse dependence as a relational phenomenon which gives
birth to different forms of being, of thinking and of expression (idem). Anyway, if we want to
apply this Freirian conception to the Portuguese situation of early childhood education and
teacher education, we must be aware of the social closeness and proximity which can explain
partially, the silence. Freire also clarifies that to be silent cannot be reduced to not having an
authentic word, but it is rather linked to a blind tendency to follow the prescriptions of those
who speak and impose their voice (idem). Extending this parallelism between Freire’s analysis
of the culture of silence and what I labelled the Portuguese high-density culture, one could
eventually think that the state of being-for-one-selves is an achievement to accomplish in
Portuguese society, similar to what Freire called an “untested possibility” (idem).
I have also been told that, on certain occasions, when students reported to some schools’ head
teachers that they witnessed physical punishments, such reports were devaluated by sayings
such as, students were “exaggerating”, and that it was just a matter of “some little smacking of
the slightest”, “nothing that should concern anyone”, “nothing serious”. Despite these
demoralising reactions, I was told that some students tried to assert children’s rights and well-
being, trying simultaneously to organise that “constructive deception” (cf. Pereira, 1990a),
hoping that it might protect them from depressive states, telling themselves that they were right,
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that their indignation was legitimate and appropriated. This must be viewed as a courageous
attitude, because normally, professionals who denounce physical violence against children
suffer negative consequences for it. To give an example, in 2017, two teachers who denounced
the mistreating of six of their colleagues against children in an institution for children at risk17
were suspended from their functions.18 We must be aware that these episodes occurred in
Portugal, a country where most adults hypocritically hide this cultural problem, this terrible
culture of violence against children, clearly inherited from Salazar’s dictatorship that lasted
almost half a century and that ended only 45 years ago.

The evaluation process of teacher education in Portugal: Some harsh comments

During the last two decades, the educational political decisions of Portuguese administrations
have been grounded on the assumptions that the education system has efficacy and productivity
crises. Policy makers generalised the idea,19 (read, the belief), that this crisis is the result of a
lack of “quality” of teachers’ education, as well as of their competencies. Besides these
concepts, other contiguous ones often appeared associated with them, such as the concepts of
excellence, efficacy, and powerful thinking, all the more so since they have become ubiquitous
in all discourses on teacher education. Such trends are explicitly or implicitly present in the
assessment of mechanisms of quality assurance, by means, for instance, of SWOT analysis,
which serves to identify “strengths”, “weaknesses”, “opportunities”, and “threats” related to
project planning and structural functioning of teacher education programs.20 The supposed lack
of quality and of competence would be produced by unproductive pedagogical practices, as
well as by poor administrative management of educational institutions. In order to answer to
this crisis, the governance evaluation of teacher education courses has been attributed by
independent commissions and sub-commissions that outlined and applied several evaluative
systems and devices21. This way of thinking concerning teachers’ education led to a curricular
organisation characterised by the absence of a deep interrogation about the various meanings
for which the very concepts of “quality” and “competence” refer to, resulting in an inadequate
conception of the nature of learning. It seems as if there is a tacitly shared sense of these
concepts, a unique, unequivocal, unquestioned and accepted sense throughout the academic

17
Public ministry investigates mistreatment and assault at institution for minors at risk.
https://zap.aeiou.pt/mp-investiga-maus-tratos-agressoes-lar-menores-risco-176230
18
https://zap.aeiou.pt/funcionarias-denunciaram-maus-tratos-instituicao-suspensas-181947
19
Commonly accepted by most deans and teachers in charge of school boards.
20
Avaliação/Acreditação de Ciclos de Estudos em Funcionamento (A3ES).
21
A3ES – Agência de Avaliação e Acreditação do Ensino Superior.
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community involved in the evaluation of higher education courses. One of the major problems
is linked with the definition of “learning” as a concept. Mainly because it belongs to that
difficult position of the three problems of psychology (Pinheiro, 2004), namely the problem of
the individualistic perspective, the problem arising from the idea of a decontextualised
cognition and the problem connected with the conception of a disembodied cognition. These
three problems of psychology have served an overvaluation of the learning object. But,
ironically, to overcome those difficulties, it is necessary to go beyond the object of learning.
Ference Marton and John Bowden developed a radical reflection on the notions of awareness
and variation, central concepts of their phenomenographic perspective of learning. One of the
problems teacher education programs must deal with, is related to the unknown specific
situations that students will need, as teachers, to face in future educational situations which
they will deal with during their career. Obviously, teachers’ educators cannot predict or guess
what those problems will be. So, it is necessary to ask: “what must be learned/what must be
taught?” Bowden and Marton answered that question suggesting that the regularities and
invariances students learn are impregnated with a large number of dimensions of variation. In
other words, the dimensions and relations between them are the invariants. They are invariant,
they do not vary, and because students have learned the variation, they cannot only deal with
what they have already encountered, but they will also encounter things that they have not yet
found. They will be able to construct a sense of new situations in terms of their critical aspects.
These critical aspects are dimensions of variation constituted by the new situation and the
previous situations that they resemble in critical aspects. These authors’ thesis is that students
will be able to deal with future situations that vary (and with new situations), because they have
experienced in the past situations that vary, and which were new but have now become known
(cf. Bowden & Marton, 1999, p. 34).
Moreover, concerning the ambiguous concept of quality, I noticed that the use of this term
leads inevitably to misunderstandings, since its use has become indiscriminate during the last
decade, appearing in the academic discourse, either as a substantive or as an adjective. In these
academic discourses, on the one hand, the term quality seems to be used to designate the
character or property of objects or services and the characteristics that determine their nature;
on the other hand, on most occasions, the term seems to refer to the excellence of those objects
or services, which allows them to be given a value and even a position on a value scale. Usually,
quality is hierarchised in degrees of excellence and exemplarity, powerful thinking, etc. These
labels reveal clearly the kind of ideology that underlies studies that affect the performance of
teachers and educators, an idea imported from the sports world and which has become a
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veritable obsession within today’s Western societies, marked by the cult of high levels of
achievement. The need for satisfaction of narcissistic desires is in fact closely linked to this
model which paves the way for high-quality performance and, conversely, demonises low-
quality performance. The performances’ position in the quality scale has become a central
element when evaluating students and professionals who are required to be heroic and
adaptable to all situations (cf. Enriquez 1993: 27). This is how, for example, the excellence of
teachers and educators is talked about in the same way as the discourses on “expertise”, “the
prodigy of exemplary performances” and the creation of “powerful thinking in teachers and
students” (cf. Berliner, 1994). Bowden and Marton (1999) decried the results of this
contemporary movement of quality and excellence, warning that one of the most disastrous
effects of quality design on the basis of the value of a product, which can be classified (read
measurable) on a scale of excellence, is what translates into the quality control model. This
process of control of both the product and the process which gave rise to it, is a model that can
be enounced as follows: once the quality or excellence of a particular product has been
ascertained, it is concluded that the process which originated it may be pre-viewed as a
guaranteed means to achieve the product’s excellence. Therefore, that would be a question of
ensuring that this producer process of excellence is controlled. The fact that this principle may
be valid for the production of objects and goods does not authorise an extension to
teaching/learning processes, in this case for teacher education devices and procedures. This
impossibility of applying terminology usually used outside educational contexts (production,
supply, customer, etc.) arises not only from the complexity of educational activities and
training processes in general, but also from the fact that quality management training cannot
be reduced to a mere evaluation of the training quality results and of the training process control
per se.
In reality, and firstly, education should not lose sight of the fact that the “product” can never
be guaranteed by any “exemplary” process, since in order to maintain a minimum of coherence
and harmony with theories of development, one must appreciate the idea that the only producer
of the future graduate is the student himself/herself. This is not only an idea that must always
be present in the teacher educators’ spirits, this is the idea. According to this view, teacher
educators’ contexts facilitate approximately/roughly the construction of the early childhood
teachers’ future professional identity and, in this sense, the teachers’ educators could be, at
best, co-authors of this construction. In other words, the teachers’ educators function is to
support effectively the early childhood students’ development/learning process. Secondly,
teachers’ educators should acknowledge their limitations in relation to the possible prediction
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of the students’ future vocational training, that is, teachers’ educators should recognise their
work’s paradoxical characteristics: training early childhood professionals for the unknown, for
the unpredictable. Thus, the adoption of these managerial principles distorts the control of
training processes by misleadingly applying the control procedures for the products of
industrial activity and, consequently, generating a quality culture which is also different from
that which is developed in companies. In other words, it can be said that the culture of education
(Bruner, 1996) is essentially different from the corporate culture and, consequently,
educational institutions cannot be conceived as business companies. As paradoxical as it may
seem, this whole set of discourses filled with this terminology, seems to denounce a more or
less conscious, more or less aware, (read interested) type of qualiaphobia. In fact, this tendency
and this insistence in organising value scales of quality, proves to be truly absurd if one looks
at the meaning of the term quality. Indeed, the deep meaning of the concept refers to the specific
and essential property of a being, to the sensible and non-measurable aspect of things, i.e., to
qualia. However, the cognitivist perspectives that underlie “powerful thinking” tend to be
qualiaphobic, that is, tend to deny and eliminate the phenomenal experience of subjects as an
inter-subjective process of co-construction of the Self. This trend, by focusing precisely on the
most decisive regions of the identity’s construction of educators, becomes a particularly
harmful obstacle to students’ and educational professionals’ development. In this panorama,
where the invocation of quality is done within a qualiaphobic framework, what stands out is
an insistence on instrumental rationality, on the training of educators’ skills, on
didactic/cognitive engineering that aims at the “acquisition” of competent concepts and
gestures, effective and efficient. Alternative conceptions/narratives on quality see it as a
dynamic process, for instance, a study on “competence requirements in early childhood
education and care” (Mathias Urban et al., 2012), analysed the concept of quality within a view
according to which it “needs to be considered as a continuous process” (idem: 509). In this
vein, the authors designed the study ascribing it to a position that moves away from relativist
positions without neglecting the outcomes, adopting “a systemic, dynamic and processual
definition of quality and an emphasis on dialogue and negotiation neither open the way to
unconditional relativism (‘anything goes’) nor lose sight of ‘outcomes’” (idem: 510). The
authors reiterated this conception, asserting that “the ‘quality’ of early childhood services
depends on those who, on a day to day basis, work with young children, families and
communities” (idem: 523). Besides, this study showed the relative relevance of level of
qualification of competent early childhood staff and the consequent quality of services: “the
formal level of qualification of staff is an important factor for the quality of services as well as
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for the level of professionalism and competence” (idem). However, as the authors underline,
“competence is more than the sum of the individual practitioner’s knowledge, skills and
attitudes” (idem). Asserting a non-individualist and non-decontextualised position, the authors
sustained that: “at its best, [competence] unfolds in reciprocal relationships between
individuals, teams, institutions and governance in the early childhood system” (idem).

What thought for educators: The thinking that calculates or the thinking that meditates?

Qualiaphobia is only part of today’s dominant thought, characterised by a “culture” of

disregard for philosophical reflection, this “culture” marked by the constant repetition of a
scientific-technological discourse that tends to discredit the philosophising educators, those
who indulge in the “whimsy” of interrogating the sacrosanct scientific paradigm. It is precisely
in nowadays’ context that Heidegger’s warnings become indispensable to all who wish to
maintain some contact with lucidity. I refer very especially to the teachings given in the middle
of the last century by Heidegger during his impressive lectures of Zollikon (2001). It is possible
and timely to convey the recommendations Heidegger originally addressed to psychiatrists, to
educators in general, to teacher educators, to all those professionals who are dedicated to
helping people in difficulty, children, adolescents or adults, who in a permanent or transitory
way, encounter difficulties in the development of their knowledge, people who suffer for not
being able to correspond as well as they would wish to the demands made on them (Cifali,
1998, 1999). In this way, we can see that Heideggerian recommendations are transferred to
those who dedicate themselves to education, that is, to those who belong to professions that
Freud called “impossible professions”.
In fact, the German thinker’s wise words can be assigned to us, educators, teachers and teacher
educators. Those “professionals of the impossible” must know their historical position,
“making clear to [themselves] daily that the long-approaching fate of European man [we can
read, contemporaneous man] is at work everywhere here” (Heidegger, 2001: 103). And to think
historically means “to give up the unconditional and absolute acceptance of progress under
pressure of which the humanity of Western man threatens to perish” (idem). We are well aware
of the illusion that presumes progress would allow the “right knowledge”, the application of a
referential theory of truth. We could then access the absolute knowledge of the other, child,
student, teacher… We could calculate almost everything, to find the causalities of almost
anything. And what is not yet possible to calculate, to know in an absolute and certain way,
will soon be (cf. idem).
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Sometimes when we, educators, psychologists, trainers, say that we have as an aim the
knowledge of the being of the child, or of the student, to carry out this project, we sometimes
measure and classify their behaviour. Other times, we try at all costs to establish causal
relationships, to determine certainties, to find explanations. The concern that I wish to keep
here very clearly lies in the following question: when we do this, do we know the being of the
child or of the student? Or is it that, unbeknownst to us, we are completely passing by the being
we want to know? To what extent will we be cloistered in scientific thought, in the thinking of
that science which Heidegger referred to as “wholly dogmatic”, which “deals with
reprehensible representations and prejudices” (idem)? To paraphrase Heidegger, to what extent
are we still professionals who think, and who are not willing to give place to scientific
technicians, or to become technicians of education (cf. idem)?
In their professional activity, an educator, a teacher, a psychologist, apprehends and deals with
volatile phenomena, feelings of sadness, joy, suffering, enthusiasm of the people with whom
they work (children or adults), with their students, with their colleagues, and with their own
feelings, with their own ways of being. As it may seem obvious, these qualities of experience
cannot be quantified, nor even conceptualised in watertight categories: how can one measure
or conceptualise sadness? And yet, the quantification and conceptualisation of what is
impossible to quantify and conceptualise has been an almost constant preoccupation (read
obsession) of psychology, and also of education and pedagogy, it would seem as if by
contagion, which inexorably leads these disciplines to a paradoxical position and leaves us,
professionals of education, in a position of extreme identity fragility. Alternatively, this is a
question of reflecting on these phenomena we deal with in our day-to-day life, about the
modalities of our experience of these phenomena, about how children, our colleagues, the
parents of children and people in general experience educational situations. How can we think
about our way of being-with-and-for-others (Ricœur, 1990) in educational situations?
When we, educators, teachers and trainers, declare that we should help children, young people
and adults (students and teachers) to build their knowledge, when we proclaim that our role is
to facilitate the development/learning process of our learners, what are we terming? When we
state our conviction that, in addition to knowing the contents of what we teach, and to having
relevant information about the development/learning process, the main, fundamental, and
essential part of our profession lies in the relational aspect, what do we mean precisely? How
can we develop a sensitive presence to the other? How can we develop a genuine attitude of
openness to the experience of the other? How can we develop an attitude of true solicitude
towards the other? How can we fine-tune our way of being and being with others? What do
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these expressions mean: sensitive presence, genuine attitude of openness, true solicitude? What
is a way of being and being attuned, attuned to others? It is not easy to answer these questions,
because it is not an obvious task to let phenomena speak, to express the ways we experience
them, to allow and to be attentive to the expression of the experience of others; although we all
have access to our own experience and to the experience of others. Even though experience is
the most inevitable of all phenomena, we must realise “how difficult it is everywhere to let the
phenomena speak for themselves today instead of pursuing information. The characteristic of
the latter is precisely to obstruct, from the beginning, our access to the forma, the essence, and
the proper character of the being of things. Information precludes our ability to see forma”
(Heidegger, 2001: 58).
This is a difficult project since we live in a historic time that is not conducive to this reflection,
a historic time where quantity and quantification, classifications and certainties are considered
as the fundamental references of all valid thinking; these reflections remind us of Freire’s
opening words of Pedagogy of Hope, where he stated precisely these untoward characteristics
of current times which dismiss ideals and dreams: “We are surrounded by a pragmatic
discourse that would have us adapt to the facts of reality. Dream, and utopia, are called not
only useless, but positively impeding” (2004: 7). Besides, we live in a historical time when the
information about children, about their development, accumulates in a vertiginous way. At
every moment we are faced with a mass of information about which we barely have time to
reflect upon, to evaluate its relevance, to estimate its validity, its usefulness. Yet, we are struck
sometimes by the paradoxical feeling that this information does not fundamentally change
children’s lives in the aspects that seem to us most urgent, since, apparently, children are
finding it increasingly difficult to fulfil the main task of their existence: happiness, conceived
as a self-fulfilling sentiment, far removed either from the “Boy Scout ideology” (Eagleton,
2008: 96), or from “some beaming, bovine contentment” (idem) or even from any kind of
individual achievement: “achievements make sense [only] within the qualitative context of a
whole life, not (as in the mountaineering ideology of life) as isolated peaks of attainment”
(idem).
Seventy years ago, Heidegger claimed: “We are living in a peculiar, strange, and uncanny age.
The more frantically the volume of information increases, the more decisively the
misunderstanding and blindness to the phenomena grows” (2001: 74). “Furthermore”, he
added, “the more excessive the information, the less we have the capacity for the following
insight: modern thought is increasingly blinded and becomes a visionless calculation, providing
only the chance to rely on effect and possibly on the sensational. But there are a few [people]
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left who are able to experience a [kind of] thinking which is not calculating but thanking”
(2001: 74). Following, Heidegger suggested that

these few are able to experience ‘thanking’ as being indebted, that is, remaining
receptive to the claim of what manifests itself. Beings are and are not nothing. In that
‘is’ [i.e., the presence of beings], the tacit language of being addresses the human being,
whose distinction and peril consist in his being open in manifold ways to beings as
beings. (2001: 75)

This position resembles Paul Ricœur’s conception of solicitude, which attained a status more
fundamental than the simple obedience to duty, becoming instead a benevolent spontaneity (cf.
Ricœur 1990: 222). These are precisely the ways of thinking and acting which are usually
missing in educational interventions. Instead, nowadays, many Portuguese researchers and
educators are busily engaged in the measuring of well-being and involvement of children and
adults, by means of scales invented by Ferre Laevers, a very fashionable Belgian professor, at
least in Portugal (cf. Portugal & Leavers, 2010). This measurement obsession is in line with
the dogma of the natural sciences, which intends to determine the nature of things exclusively
in relation to their measurability. But Heidegger questioned precisely this measurability of
things, asking whether it belongs exclusively to them, i.e. whether it stays its sole property, or,
on the contrary, whether it belongs to the one who proceeds to the measurement of those same
things (cf. idem). The disconcerting answer of Heidegger to that question is that the
measurability of things belongs to the things themselves, since it is based on the extension of
things and, simultaneously, it belongs to the human being who measures them, because when
someone says, for example, that a table has a certain dimension, he/she is only saying
something about the relation (of measurement) that he/she establishes with that table. This
means that measurement and human behaviour of measuring co-belong with each other: “On
one hand, measurability is founded in the extendedness of the table. This can be measured. On
the other hand, measurability also designates the possibility of the measuring comportment of
the human being toward the table” (Heidegger, 2001: 98). Concluding, Heidegger stresses that
“our speech about measurability refers to something concerning both the table and the human
comportment to it” (idem). Nevertheless, this author adds, “numerical measurements by
themselves do not determine the reality of the table as table, that is, [they do not determine it]
as a definite thing that is useful. This measurability, of course, is a necessary condition for the
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possibility of producing the table, but it is never a sufficient condition for the very being of the
table” (idem).
Considering the meaning and characteristics of feelings such as grief, pain and sadness,
Heidegger suggests: “How do we measure sadness? Evidently, one cannot measure it at all!
Why not? If one approached sadness with a method of measuring, the very approach would
already be contrary to the meaning of sadness. Thus, one would preclude sadness as sadness
beforehand. Here, even the claim to measure is already a violation of the phenomenon as a
phenomenon” (2001: 82). Heidegger deepened this problem of the non-commensurability of
emotions in the following terms:

But do we not also use quantitative concepts in our speech about sadness? One does not
speak of an ‘intense’ sadness, but of a ‘great’ or a ‘profound’ sadness? One can also
say, ‘He is a bit sad’, but that does not mean a small quantity of sadness. The
[expression] ‘a bit’ refers to a quality of mood. This very depth, however, is by no
means measurable. (idem)

Besides, the problem of measuring the depth of a room is a serious endeavour, since

not even the ‘depth’ of this room as experienced in my being-in-the-world is

measurable, [because] when I attend to depth in order to measure it by approaching the
window […], then the depth experience moves with me as I move toward the window,
and it goes right through it. I can objectify and measure this depth as little as I can
traverse my relationship to this depth. Yet I am able, more or less, to estimate the
distance precisely from me to the window. […] Yet, in this case, I measure the distance
between two bodies, not the depth opened up in each case by my being-in-the-world.
(Heidegger, 2001: 82)

Reiterating the considerations on the measurement of feelings, Heidegger added the following:

Regarding the depth of a feeling of sadness, there is no reason or occasion whatsoever

to estimate it quantitatively, let alone to measure it. As far as sadness is concerned, it
can only be shown how a person is affected by it and how his relationship to himself
and the world is changed. (idem)
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We must certainly expand and generalise this example by applying the same reasoning to other
emotions: happiness, fear, surprise, etc. According to these conceptions, Heidegger viewed
humans in the world in a rather different way from things. One could say that this is a banality.
However, if we look carefully, this Heideggerian idea, this differentiated conception of the
being-in-the-world of humans and the being of things, is not banal at all.
In fact, “professionals of the human”, to use Mireille Cifali’s (1996) expression by which she
designated educators, psychologists or other professionals involved in childcare and education,
those professionals are in a very delicate situation. When they objectify people they work with
(children, adolescents, young people or the elderly), when they want to know and describe
them objectively, when they want to categorise them, when they compare them with norms, or
with each other, when they establish causal relations to explain their behaviour, when they
measure this or that aspect of these people, when they intend to predict exactly the educational
situations, when they try to plan and to program their educational interventions in detail, when
they attempt to establish hierarchically organised objectives according to unequivocal criteria,
when they construct with pathetic devotion those devices which presumably guarantee
predictability of everything and everyone, when they fanatically embody the construction of
norms and rules, when they draw conclusions (also objective) from every situation, when they
instrumentalise and technify the relationship, when all this happens, the educators (or other
professionals of the human) are acting, speaking and thinking as if their students or pupils were
things, and finally, they become prisoners of their ways of thinking and acting, losing their
ability to listen, their capacity to open to the other, to their students and pupils. Rendering the
others into things, the educators fail to open, to clear, to attune to the others and they can no
longer see them, and instead of developing their own being and their being-with-another, they
create an inauthentic mode of being that aims to reach the impossible, i.e., the exact knowledge
of the other that would allow the explanation of the causes which, supposedly, would be
responsible for what the other does and says, those causal explanations that allegedly allow the
predictability of what the other will say, will do or even the thoughts the other will have. The
infernal circle of control, manipulation, domination and even exploitation of the other is thus
closed.
In other words, educators risk to be prisoners of their inability to think the other differently
from what they think about things, hostages to their tacit belief that the other is no different
from a thing, since it can be known and manipulated as such. These educators are hindered
from the necessary access to an alternative perception, to a non-conceptual “seeing”. Instead,
they apply the most diverse scales intended to measure the immeasurable.
Recto header
Verso header

Beyond hope and despair: The need of essentialism

Onde pus a esperança,

as rosas murcharam logo

[Where I placed hope,

roses soon withered away]22
Fernando Pessoa (Poems)

What hope can we place on the potential of education to fulfil its promise of citizens’
autonomy, in an epoch when the very source of emancipation, the autonomic principle, has
been reduced to an ordinary individualistic principle, becoming a capitalist mean of alienation
(Pinheiro, 2013)? What hope can we have at a historical time when, more than in previous
generations, all hopes of emancipation of contemporary humanity seem to be crumbling?
Contrary to the conception that humans are the product of circumstances and education and,
consequently, transformed humans would be the products of other circumstances, educators
should be aware that it is humans who change circumstances and that they, themselves, need
to be educated (Marx and Engels, 2002, thesis 3) throughout their lives to dare to develop a
transforming practice, one that contributes to the greatest possible harm to humans’ domination
by the capitalist logic. Concomitantly, in these adverse socio-historical circumstances,
teachers, as subjects/citizens, must mobilise their internal resources in order to organise a
constructive disappointment, that is, the elaboration of this movement of disappointment which
enables them to ensure they dispute power, hierarchy, and academic erudite ignorance, instead
of getting depressed, or hyper-adapting and submitting themselves to those harmful
circumstances (cf. Pereira, 1990a: 2–11). These modest and meagre tasks are, however, more
lucid than the attempts to reform the capitalist system through education. As István Mészáros
pointed out, it is impossible to reform capitalism. Due to its very nature, as a systemic totality,
capitalism is completely incorrigible (2009: 27). It is up to teachers and teacher educators to
fight against alienation, and to adapt an assertion from this author. It is the duty of teachers and
trainers to produce as much as they are able to, the nonconformity and the non-consensus,
trying to disobey in an applied and timely manner to the institutionalised and legally sanctioned
boundaries.

22
Own translation.
 Recto header

In a succinct way, and resuming the purposes formulated by the notable La Boétie,
revolutionary teachers and trainers must refuse to serve the domination of mercantile logic and
contest it to the utmost, otherwise they will be voluntary servants of the tyrant capitalist order.
These intellectual workers whose utensils are thought and therefore words, have also the task
of bringing together a clear understanding of the following aspects: firstly, “words work on
behalf of the dominant organization of life” (cf. Collective, 1963: 29); secondly, “power
presents only the falsified, official sense of words, which means, in a manner of speaking, it
forces them to carry a pass, determines their place in the production process and gives them
their pay check” (idem); thirdly, the use of language’s rules takes away its fluidity, making it
locked and indirect, i.e., “words coexist with power in a relation analogous to that which
proletarians (in the modern as well as the classic sense of the term) have with power. Employed
by it almost full time, exploited for every sense and nonsense that can be squeezed out of them,
they still remain in some sense fundamentally alien to it” (Collective, 1963: 31).
Once Paulo Freire stated somewhere that, in a country like Brazil during the military
dictatorship, the simple fact of having hope was a revolutionary act. I think, increasingly often
that this saying is equally pertinent when we substitute Brazil for World. I am aware of the fact
that, progressively, I am assaulted by a disturbing feeling that we are on a road to nowhere. I
will close this chapter’s last section with some reflections which may help us to rebuild hope
that political emancipation will make its way, even if it has been and still is severely undone in
this criminal world. When despair seems to prevail in my reflections about the world, I recall
a sentence uttered by an Ursula Le Guin’s character plagued by seemingly insurmountable
circumstances in one her books of the Earthsea cycle: “Endurance must overcome hope”.
Additionally, I also recall the following thoughts from Marx and Freire.
In May 1843, 5 years before the French people revolted for the second time in half a century
(revolutions of 1844 and 1848) and 28 years before the revolutionary experience of the
Commune of 1871, in a letter addressed to his friend Arnold Ruge, Karl Marx wrote the
following outburst: “You will not say that I have had too high an opinion of the present time;
and if, nevertheless, I do not despair of it, that is only because it is precisely the desperate
situation which fills me with hope” (Marx, 1843). Paulo Freire had a very similar understanding
of this dilemma which threatens to tear us apart between hope and despair. Actually, in 1992,
25 years after the edition of Pedagogia do Oprimido, Freire wrote his book, A Pedagogia da
Esperança, where he questioned the problematic of hope and despair, admitting that he could
not “ignore hopelessness as a concrete entity, nor turn a blind eye to the historical, economic,
and social reasons that explain […] hopelessness” (2004: 8). Yet, he added that he could not
Verso header

construct a meaning of life, of human existence “apart from hope and dream” (idem). From his
point of view, “Hope is an ontological need [and] hopelessness is but hope that has lost its
bearings, and become a distortion of that ontological need” (idem). Besides, Freire warned
against the paralysis and fatalism produced by despair, making it unmanageable to have “the
strength we absolutely need for a fierce struggle that will re-create the world” (idem). He
insisted on this inescapable human need, asserting that he was hopeful, “not out of mere
stubbornness, but out of an existential, concrete imperative” (idem).
To get it done, to guarantee this existential, concrete imperative, it seems clear the rightness of
the following Terry Eagleton assertion:

We cannot jettison essentialism because we need to know among other things which
needs are essential to humanity and which are not. Needs which are essential to our
survival and well-being, such as being fed, keeping warm, enjoying the company of
others and a degree of physical integrity, can then become politically criterial. (2003:
104)

Concluding these considerations, Eagleton declares quite rightly in an emphatic tone that:

any social order which denies such needs can be challenged on the grounds that it is
denying our humanity, which is usually a stronger argument against it than the case that
it is flouting our contingent cultural conventions. (idem)

In a later text, commenting on Louis Althusser’s critical extension of Marx’s distancing and
hostility towards all ideology forms, as supreme false conscience, Eagleton enounced this
central problematic of hope and despair, by means of the following set of questions and
answers:

what if ideology, after all, were vitally necessary? What if we need it to persuade
ourselves that we are political agents capable of acting autonomously? Marxist theory
may be aware that the individual has no great degree of unity or autonomy, or even of
reality; but individuals themselves must come to trust that they have, if they are to act
effectively. (Eagleton, 2008: 52)

Closing this chapter, I would like to quote the following Isidore Ducasse’s words which
comfort me from the poverties of this world, words that relieve myself from the current times
that seem so invaded by bad taste, words that express the core meaning of life, as I conceive it:
 Recto header

“Taste is the fundamental quality that sums up all the other qualities. It’s the ultimate
intelligence, the nec-plus-ultra of intelligence” (Ducasse, 1963).23

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