Moral and Civic Education in Brazil during the dictatorship: power and resistance

Abstract

This article deals with the presence of Brazilian governmental power through the creation of Moral and Civic Education (EMC) in Brazil and the National Commission of Morals and Citizenship (CNMC), the legitimating body of EMC and the possible resistances in the classroom context. Created as a discipline and educational practice, its main objective was to maintain «national traditions», in view of the formation of obedient and uncontested bodies of the political model adopted by the government. As object of study, two schools of Pernambuco ─ PE were chosen, a state known for its actions of resistance to authoritarian governments. In both, the ways in which power sought to establish itself and the mechanisms of reluctance of subjects to the imposed system were verified. The method adopted was oral history, through interviews with ex-students and former teachers of both institutions. Based on the analysis of their speeches, we sought to identify possible mechanisms used in the classroom to counteract the government’s imposition on the contents to be worked by EMC during the dictatorial period. In the end, it was perceived that, in a school context, power allowed or not greater resistance to the pedagogical model imposed from a given understanding of what was understood by morality and civility in the Brazilian society of that repressive moment.