I South Florida Congress of Development, Miami, 2021.

FANTASMATIC TEACHING: LANGUAGE AND REFLECTION IN

THE SCHOOL REALITY OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Erick Vinicius Mathias Leite

UFMS - University City of Campo Grande
http://lattes.cnpq.br/260400054099922

ABSTRACT
This article aims to analyze and reflect on the teaching and learning relationships that
took place during the Supervised Curricular Internship in Portuguese Language and its
Literature, at a school of state sphere, in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, considering
the perspective of the militant teacher, of Galo (2002), and teaching according to Barthes
(2012,2013).

Keywords: Fantasmatic Teaching, Militant Teacher, Language, Teaching, Public Sphere

of Education.

1 INTRODUCTION
This article aims to analyze and reflect the teaching and learning relations that
took place during the period of Supervised Curricular Internship of Portuguese Language
and its Literatures, in a state school, in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, taking into
account the perspective of militant teacher, Galo (2002), and teaching according to
Barthes (2012,2013).
The stage of completion of the Supervised Curricular Internship is essential,
insofar as it integrates theory and school practice, since, dealing with a degree course, it
is essential that the academic apply the knowledge obtained in the undergraduate
disciplines. Thus, promoting an empirical view of Brazilian education in its complexity.

2 READING AND REFLECTION: THE CHALLENGES OF TEACHING

Roland Barthes (2013) claims that language is "fascist" because it forces us to
allege, classify, stereotype, and impose, and on top of it all, this is the teacher's working
tool. Barthes as a critic of writing claims, "it is within language must be fought [...]"
(BARTHES, 2013, p.15). For this "combat" to be effective and thus destabilize the
servitude to signs, the author supports a teaching dislocated from the form, "outside the
power".
Barthes advocates a less contentious and more reflective teaching, in Aula (2013),
the author compares the ideal teaching process as a "mirage" or "ghost", something that

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fosters the curiosity and research of students and that is not exact or defined. The author
also reiterates the role of the teacher, who must disassociate himself from the power that
language represents, to promote a more humane and meaningful teaching.

This teacher will propose a "phantasmatic teaching" and will be willing to

"unlearn". Moreover, this Class is inaugural not only in time, as it is the first
of a series, but also in space, as it intends to create, within the College of
France, an area of play and affection. (BARTHES, 2013, p.76)

In this perspective, Barthes (2012, p.225) comments: "There are two ways to
subvert the legality of knowledge (inscribed in the institution): either disperse it or give
it away [...] the request for clarification that he knows is always, deep down, a request for
love." For the critic, sensitivity, affection and delicacy are factors that directly interfere
in the study, according to him, idea of work takes away the pleasure of learning.
Therefore, the ideal teacher, according to the author, is the one who: "teaches himself
what is expected to be taught to others" (Idem, p.226).
Throughout the unfolding of the educational practices learned in the training
course, it is inherent the emergence of conflicts with respect to the teaching work, there
is an unavoidable clash between theory and practice in the face of school reality. The first
adversity we raise is the absence of a system, as Saviani states:

With this approach to the meaning of the educational system, I registered the
historical role played by the national system of education with a view to the
universalization of elementary education and the consequent eradication of
illiteracy in the countries where it was in fact implemented. Noting that Brazil
is not among these countries, I then went on to consider the obstacles that
historically prevented the organization of the National Education System in
our country, classifying them into four types: (a) the economic obstacles
arising from the historical resistance to the maintenance of public education in
Brazil; (b) the political obstacles characterized by discontinuity in educational
policies; (c) the philosophical-ideological obstacles, that is, the prevalence of
ideas or pedagogical mentalities refractory to the organization of education in
the form of a national system; (d) the legal obstacles materialized in the
resistance to the incorporation of the idea of national system in our educational
legislation, whose spearhead was anchored in the supposed and logically
inconsistent thesis of the unconstitutionality of the proposed National System
of Education. (SAVIANI, 2010, p.381)
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The absence of a National Education System causes a notable theoretical

discrepancy between primary and secondary education. This dissension inhibits students
and teachers from playing their roles to the full. As for the Portuguese Language, it is
noticeable that high school students make constant grammatical mistakes and have little
interest in reading, factors that should have been developed in elementary school, as stated
in the Law of Directives and Bases (Section III - Art.32):

Compulsory elementary education, lasting nine (9) years, free in

public schools, beginning at the age of six (6), will have as its
objective the basic formation of the citizen, by means of:
I - the development of the ability to learn, having as basic means
the full command of reading, writing and calculation. (LDB,
2018, p.22)

As for the teaching of literature, it is up to the teacher to introduce the student to

literate culture as a means of appropriation of certain knowledge, development of critical
thinking, and reading practice. However, given the eminent discontinuity that plagues
Brazilian education, teaching literature becomes a challenge, since reading practices are
precarious in public schools, as announced by Moreno (2016,p.1) in his article about
Brazil's results in the last Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA): "In
Pisa 2015, 50.99% of students were below proficiency level 2. The average performance
was 407 points. It is the second consecutive drop in the area of reading since 2009."
Another factor that widens the gap between theory and school reality is the
considerable number of functionally illiterate students, that is, those who cannot interpret
simple texts and understand mathematical operations, even though they can read and
write, information based on data from the Functional Literacy Indicator (INAF):

Functionally Illiterate people - equivalent, in 2018, to about 3 out of 10

Brazilians - have great difficulty in making use of reading and writing and
mathematical operations in everyday life situations, such as recognizing
information on a poster or leaflet or even doing simple arithmetic operations
with values greater than hundreds. (INAF, 2018, p.8)

A fourth element that we raised that translates the terrible performance of public-
school students, as pointed out before, is the excessive idle time, granted by the regular
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teachers themselves. We know that free time used correctly, in a didactic way, can
promote a considerable quality of life for the student. However, what is observed is a
corrosive attempt of the education professional to relieve his workload, and as a result of
this attitude, leisure leads students to boredom, addiction, and consequently, self-
degradation, as Wogel (2013, p.11) attests: [...] use of the same (idleness) in a negative
way that, instead of promoting self-development, degrades the human person".
Faced with the problems raised so far, discontinuity of teaching, scarce reading
practice, functional illiteracy and negative leisure time, it remains for the education
professional to confront adversity and act in a militant way, to the extent that seeks the
new within their reality, despite the mishaps pointed out by us in addition to others, so
reiterates Galo (2002, p.171 ): "The militant teacher would be the one who, living with
the students the level of misery that these students live, could, from within this level of
misery, from within these possibilities, seek to build collectively."
The multiplicity of school realities causes the obvious opposition between theory
and practice. The overcrowded classrooms, the structural precariousness, the scarcity of
reading, and the considerable number of functional illiterate students, among other
factors, make up the imminent struggle that novice teachers have to face. But, despite the
adversities, the education professional must always seek the new, within his reality, and
approach a teaching as close as possible to, as Barthes (2013, p.44) defines it, "no power,
a little knowledge, a little wisdom, and as much flavor as possible."
Thus, we will now discuss the period of experience resulting from the subject of
Supervised Curricular Internship in Portuguese Language and its literatures, taking into
account the perspective of the militant teacher, by Galo (2002), and the teaching
according to Barthes (2012,2013) in face of the school reality of the state network in
Campo Grande-MS.

3 OBSERVATION PERIOD: THE SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT AND ITS

CONTRADICTIONS
For ethical reasons we decided not to expose the name of the school, but we will
try in this topic to unveil its general characteristics in an attempt to offer a panoramic
picture of its physical and educational conditions. Likewise, we will only deal with the
actions observed and carried out in the High School.

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The school in question is located between two other large schools in the city of
Campo Grande-MS. Thus, the school has a smaller size, which guarantees the teaching
staff and management a more personalized work in view of other realities.
The school attends to the Elementary II and High School, working in the morning
and afternoon periods for thirty hours a week, thus, the high school has one more class a
day in relation to the elementary school. Besides offering the regular grade, the institution
offers extracurricular subjects such as: Scientific Initiation, life project, initiation to
robotics, youth leadership, and oriented study.
The institution has eight classrooms, a reading room, a robotics room, an indoor
court, a teachers' room, a secretariat, a coordination/direction, a kitchen, a storage room
and three bathrooms for student access, one male, one female and one for special needs,
plus two bathrooms exclusively for employees. Seven of the eight classrooms have glass
boards, and in several of these there is idle space, the technology room contains 19
computers, all of which work regularly, a television, a sound system, a projection panel
and a projector, as well as being the only lecture hall with air conditioning. A total of
three mobile projection devices is available. There is a multi-functional resource room
for specialized services. For leisure, students enjoy two ping pong and foosball tables, as
well as a vegetable garden cultivated by the school community and a large outdoor space
full of trees.
Generally speaking, the school building is already in a state of deterioration, and
the fans in the classrooms are quite old and insufficient. However, the institution has a
Parent-Teacher Association, which carries out initiatives to raise funds for the school, for
example, a more recent result of one of these actions was the installation of glass boards
in the classrooms.
As a consequence of this personalized work carried out, the results in public
evaluations do not leave anything to be desired, the school achieved good scores in the
last IDEB evaluation in 2017, besides boasting former students who passed in universities
such as UEMS, UFMS, and UFSCAR.
As the subjects Portuguese Language and Literature were unified, during the
observation period of the High School, no Language content was witnessed, as the subject
in force at the time was Literature.
The high school observation was made in the 2nd Year A and B classes. At the
time, the preparations for the science fair were taking place, but the teacher gave only
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part of the classes to the actions, besides these being directly linked to the current content:
Romanticism and Realism. The students should, in pairs, make a presentation involving
the book they had read, such as: Inocência, Iracema, Dom Casmurro, O Crime does Padre
Amaro, among others. The computer room was given for the presentations; however,
some students used this time to play games and access social networks, and the teacher
did not charge for research. We witnessed the pre-presentation rehearsal, and observed
that most students had not read the book indicated and that their information was based
on summaries and internet research, consequently, the knowledge about the complexity
of the works was minimal.
The teacher gave the students too much idle time, sometimes she passed a text for
the students to copy, sometimes she passed a printed activity, the students finished quickly
and spent the rest of the time talking, the remaining time could have been used in a
pedagogical way, but it was only negative idleness. At several moments it was perceptible
that the teacher's inclination was the teaching of Language to the detriment of Literature,
both in private conversations with us and in the way she dealt with some students'
manifestations. We will describe two situations.
The first one occurred in the 2nd Year B. One of the students' questions the
meaning of studying Literature, and the teacher answers: "You need to study Literature
to be able to quote something in the ENEM essay". It is observed in this manifestation
that the teacher restricted the importance of Literature to a mere citation in an important
test.
The second one also occurred in 2nd Year B. The teacher showed the movie
Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (2001), as part of the content about Realism. One of
the students makes a comment saying that the movie is "very boring". The teacher
answers: "It is better to watch the movie than to read the book. We can see that the teacher
herself does not encourage reading.
Attitudes like the teacher's are in line with the considerations of Lajolo (1993),
who criticizes approaches that tangent the literary text, or that place other languages over
literature. In this way, reiterates the scholar:

Proposing crossword puzzles, suggesting identification with one or another

character, dramatizing texts and similar activities that school textbooks
propose, is peripheral to the act of reading, to the solitary and profound contact
that the literary text asks for. Either the text gives a meaning to the world, or it
has no meaning at all. And the same can be said about our classes....] one
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cannot - and perhaps should not - avoid some of the more traditional ways of
teaching literature. (LAJOLO, 1993, p. 15 and 16)

Thus, the challenges for the high school regency were greater, given the scarce reading
practice that the classes had. Having a previous knowledge of Galo's (2002)
considerations, we set out to seek the new within that reality, and to unveil the importance
of Literature and encourage the pleasure of reading. As well as awakening in them the
consciousness of reflection in detriment of the mere reproduction of knowledge.

4 REFLECTION IN PRACTICE: A POSSIBLE APPROACH

The observation period was essential in that it provided a survey of the
characteristics of the classes, in order to select the contents and the ideal methodology
according to the characteristics of each class. Another important factor was the
development of contact between trainee and students; the daily contact with the students
made the regency process more pleasant.
The regency makes up the most complex phase of the Supervised Curricular
Internship period of Portuguese Language and its Literatures, because it is in this period
that the oppositions between theory and practice manifest themselves profusely. As
previously mentioned, we proposed to perform the regency having in mind the
perspective of the militant teacher, by Galo (2002). The teaching according to Barthes
(2012, 2013), but this initiative proved to be a challenge, given the short period in which
we spent with the students of the school, and we would need a longer period to carry out
our design fully, in order to generate a significant change in the reality of the classes.
The high school regency was carried out in the 2nd A and B classes. As the reading
practice was precarious in the classrooms and the students did not have the minimum
incentive from the teacher, we challenged ourselves to work literature as proposed by
Barthes (2013), in order to instigate the curiosity of the students, and thus promote
reflection and develop an appreciation for reading.
We informed the teacher of our proposal, and she agreed to apply a plan outside
the programmatic content of the high school grade. So, even though the second-year
students were studying Realism, we worked on the texts: "A parte que falta" by Shell
Silverstein, "Tentação" by Clarice Lispector, "A função da arte" by Eduardo Galeano,
"Fita-verde no cabelo" and "The Third Bank of the River" by João Guimarães Rosa.

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We reserved the computer room for all classes because it is the only one with air
conditioning and we wanted to provide a pleasant environment for the students. We also
organized the chairs in a circle since the high school grades have a considerably smaller
number of students than the elementary school, and we brought printed copies of all the
texts in sufficient quantities, with the exception of "A parte que falta" because it was
projected. Always at the beginning of class, we made it clear that they, the students, were
not going to copy material from the blackboard or perform strenuous activities, but we
are going to think and reflect.
We chose to start the Literature project with the text "A parte que falta", which is
a small, ludic work, with a simple language, but with a high load of meanings. After the
reading, the teacher asked some students' questions related to the theme of the text read
to instigate a debate, such as: "Are you the missing part of someone?", "Do you feel
complete?", "Do you need someone to be happy?", "Do you need something to be happy?
Only students who volunteered answered.
Given the need to produce material that would serve as an evaluation, we carried
out a dynamic together. The students would be divided into three groups, each of which
would have to answer a question. After the given time, each group would present its
answer, and individually the students must have the three answers in their notebooks, so
they should pay attention to their colleagues' explanation so that their activity would not
be incomplete. The questions were: "What is Literature?", "What is a classic?" and "What
is the function of art?
The activity had the intention of revealing the real meaning of studying Literature,
and mainly to promote reflection. The students had to think together about questions of
undefined answers, and thus the debate was inevitable. We based our understanding on
Erza Pound, Italo Calvino and Eduardo Galeano.
The other texts were read by the students, the readers were chosen voluntarily.
After this first reading, the teacher would ask some questions to check the level of
understanding the students had about the text, as they were works of deep significance,
there were always many questions from the students, and these aroused their interest.
Then the teacher would do a second reading, stopping and emphasizing the important
details and clarifying the points of duality. After this, a debate was opened and the
students could give their interpretations and contributions about the work read.

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The result was evident, the students showed interest in reading and in the content
of the texts. One of the students after the discussion about "The third bank of the river"
said: "I need to show this text to the world". Another student, after reflecting on " Fita-
verde no cabelo" made a gesture with her hands starting from her head and a noise with
her mouth simulating an explosion, we interpret this manifestation as, what we may call,
a "brain explosion", indicating her surprise and expansion of understanding at the end of
the debate. On the other hand, there were comments such as: "Literature is cool, but you
have to think too much". The latter reflects the precarious condition of reflective work in
schools.
There was still a group of students who didn't pay attention during the reading,
who messed with their cell phones, disturbed the others with conversation and laughter,
and at every moment we stopped the reading to demand respect and silence. In addition
to finding students only two years away from college, with minimal ability to interpret
text and very poor reading skills. For our action to be fully effective, we should have
dedicated a longer period of time, starting at the beginning of the school year, so that
reading could be a constant practice, and thus move on to larger texts.

5 CONCLUDING REMARKS
Although we had contact with the reality of public schools as fellows of the PIBIB
- Programa Institucional de Bolsas de Iniciação à Docência - and of the Residência
Pedagógica, the period of the Supervised Curricular Internship of Portuguese Language
and its Literatures gave us new and unique experiences. Thus, it is crucial for the teacher
in training to have empirical knowledge of public education, since our time in these three
institutions inferred how complex and challenging the school reality is.
The state school where we did our internship is an open institution for the
admission of interns, and provides a welcoming and personalized space for the exercise
of pedagogical work, such as glass panels, classrooms with ideal capacity, a well-
equipped technology room, among others. Besides having a faculty that is open to
proposals and projects.
Since high school works for 30 hours a week in the institution, it is totally
plausible that they work Language and Literature separately, so that the proper attention
to the reading and textual interpretation practices are effective, and the professionals can
exercise their tenancy with fluidity.
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The experiences lived during the observation and regency period showed that
teaching, according to Barthes (2013), reflective, out of power, that arouses interest and
investigation, is plausible in public education, all it takes is a constant and long-term plan.
Thus, based on the premise of the militant teacher, according to Galo (2002), we could
glimpse the spark of a real change in school reality.

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REFERENCES

BARTHES, Roland. Aula: aula inaugural da cadeira de semiologia literária do Colégio

de França, pronunciado dia 7 de janeiro de 1977: Trad: Leyla Perrone-Moisés: São
Paulo:Cultrix,2013

______. O rumor da língua. Trad: Mario Laranjeira. – 3.Ed - São Paulo: Martins Fontes,
2012.

GALO, Silvio. Em torno de uma educação menor. Revista Educação & Realidade-UFGS,
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, n.27, Porto Alegre, 2002, p.169-178

INAF Brasil 2018. Instituto Paula Montenegro, São Paulo, 2018.

LAJOLO, Marisa. Do mundo da Leitura para a Leitura do Mundo. - 6.Ed - São Paulo:
Ática, 2001.

LDB. Lei de diretrizes e bases da educação nacional. – 2. Ed. – Brasília: Senado Federal,
Coordenação de Edições Técnicas, 2018.

MORENO, Ana Carolina. Brasil cai em ranking mundial de educação em ciências, leitura
e matemática. .Globo.com. Disponível em < https://g1.glo
bo.com/educacao/noticia/brasil-cai-em-ranking-mundial-de-educacao-em-ci encias-
leitura-e-matematica.ghtml>. Acesso em 02/11/2020.

SAVIANI, Dermeval. Sistema Nacional de Educação articulado ao Plano Nacional de

Educação. Revista Brasileira de Educação, v.15, n.44, Rio de Janeiro, 2010. P. 380-393

WOGEL, Livio dos Santos. O tempo de ócio na formação escolar: A pedagogia do ócio.
XI Encontro dos Pesquisadores do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação, PUC-SP,
São Paulo, 2013.

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