Fernando Alcoforado*
This article aims to demonstrate what and how to revolutionize the education system in Brazil to prepare people to deal with the complexity of the world in which we live, exercise citizenship, make people happy and continuously prepare and update people for the labor market. In order to deal with the complexity of the world in which we live, it is necessary that people be prepared to use the information technology available and have access to information. To exercise citizenship, it is important that the teachings of Anísio Teixeira, Paulo Freire and Edgar Morin be applied. To make people happy it is essential to use quantum pedagogy and positive psychology in people’s education and to prepare and update people for the job market, changes in education at all levels must be made to prepare their students for a world of work in which people will have to operate highly complex production systems and deal with super-smart machines. This revolution is necessary in Brazil because its education system is lacking in all of this.
For Anísio Teixeira, the world in constant transformation like the one we live in requires a new type of conscious and well-prepared man to solve his own problems following the triple revolution of current life: intellectual, due to the increase in science; industrial, by technology; and social, for democracy. Paulo Freire defended the thesis that man is a being that must adapt to the world and be responsible for its transformation that cannot be reduced to a mere spectator of reality. His ontological vocation is that of the subject who operates and transforms the world. Edgar Morin defends the thesis that we need to relearn how to rejoin the part and the whole, the text and the context, the global and the planetary and face the paradoxes that technical and economic development brought with it.
Today, the world is inflated with information. We receive a lot of information that contributes very little to the growth of the individual and the community because the educational institutions in Brazil do little to prepare their students to contribute in the sense that the mass of available information is properly used for the benefit of society. Education is also not linked to the formation of the critical individual who be educated to reason and be sensitive to his peers and to local and global events and who seeks to transform society for the better. In addition, we are faced with the educational formation of individuals without a systemic, totalizing view, focused on the formation of the critical, reflective and citizen individual.
Contemporary education does not allow society to acquire the necessary knowledge to be able to think and build a better world. There is a general misinformation from individuals and the community in general in Brazil and around the world about what happens in the fields of economics, science and technology, the environment and international relations, among others. This misinformation affects the overwhelming majority of the planet’s population, making it unable to correctly interpret the reality in which it lives and, even less, to transform it. Education in the contemporary era contributes to the alienation of human beings because it is not thought of as cultivating the spirit, as a condition for the advancement of humanity. After all, what is the meaning of true education? Education must empower people to access the mass of information available, make people aware of exercising their citizenship, make people happy and qualify people for the world of work.
Every education system should aim to prepare people, not only for the job market, but also prepare to deal with the mass of information available, exercise their citizenship and make them happy. Contemporary education must provide the conditions for students to be able to access the available information. It is necessary to make students acquire the necessary knowledge to be able to think and build a better world. It is necessary to make students know about what happens in the fields of economics, science and technology, the environment and international relations, among others. It is necessary to make students know how to achieve the happiness that is one of the great goals of human beings. There is enormous disinformation that affects the overwhelming majority of students in Brazil, making them unable to correctly interpret the reality in which they live and, much less, to transform it. The current education system contributes enormously to the alienation of human beings because education is not thought of as cultivating the spirit, as a condition for the advancement of humanity. The true meaning of education therefore consists of: 1) Empowering people to access the mass of information available; 2) Make people aware to exercise their citizenship in order to build a better world; 3) Make people happy; and, 4) Qualify people for the world of work.
In planning a future-oriented education system, it is necessary to increase the number of quality educational units, with good managers, teachers and infrastructure, that are able to motivate students and that really promote meaningful, complex and comprehensive learning. There needs to be a career plan, training and valorization of educational managers and teachers. There is a need for consistent training policies to attract the best teachers, remunerate them well and qualify them better, innovative management policies that bring successful models of management to basic and higher education. Educators need to learn to fulfill themselves as people and as professionals, in precarious and difficult contexts, to learn to evolve in all fields, to be more affective and at the same time to know how to manage groups. They must become inspiring and motivating educators.
To bring about a revolution in Brazil’s education system, it is necessary to prepare the teacher to fulfill a new role. The teacher’s role is decisive so that, through education, a new type of man is created, qualified for the world of work, aware, and well prepared to transform the world in which we live for his benefit. Successful learning by students depends on the teacher who, in the education of the future, would no longer be a mere handover of information to students and would assume the role of teaching coordinator in individual and group activities with his ability to monitor, mediate, analyze processes, results, gaps and needs, from the paths taken by students individually and in groups. It is proven worldwide that the teacher is the key to quality teaching and, thus, improving student performance. We should be inspired by the educational policies practiced in Japan, Finland, South Korea and Switzerland, which are the most advanced countries in education in the world in order to restructure Brazil’s education system from early childhood to higher education.
The teaching units must be equipped in the sense that the classrooms, instead of being exclusively dedicated to theory, also aim at practice. The student must learn the theory at home and practice in the classroom with the help of a teacher / mentor. Students’ learning should be personalized so that they will learn with tools that adapt to their own abilities, being able to learn at different times and locations. Students must have the freedom to modify their learning process, choosing the subjects they wish to learn based on their own preferences and can use different devices, programs and techniques that they deem necessary for their own learning. Knowledge must not be just in theory and must be put into practice through projects so that students acquire mastery of the technique and also practice organization, teamwork and leadership. Schools must provide more space for work programs with more collaborative projects and more practice. The evaluation system must change with the end of the question and answer system of the tests, which does not adequately evaluate what the student is really capable of doing with the adoption of evaluations aiming at the realization of real projects, with the students running them effectively.
The objectives of the education system aiming to empower people to have access to the mass of information available, make people aware to exercise their citizenship in order to build a better world and qualify people for the world of work are very important, but, the main objective to be persecuted is to make people happy based on quantum pedagogy which is a form of alternative education working with psychology to change the world with the change in students’ minds. It is the practical action at home and at school to take the student to self-knowledge and to manage his emotions. Seeks well-being and happiness. It sees students beyond their school skills or merely cognitive abilities. It teaches about love, about pain, about being and feeling. It helps students to manifest their full potential.
To deal with people’s minds and lead students to self-knowledge and the management of their emotions, it is necessary to use Positive Psychology that aims to make people achieve the well-being and happiness that, ultimately, it is the main objective that guides the choice of people in life. Education should be strongly supported in Positive Psychology on the basis of which it will be possible to do more than solve or alleviate psychological disorders, but, above all, make people happy. Explaining what types of projects actually make people happy, and what types of attitudes lead to happiness or make it impossible, is the object of Positive Psychology that, as a descriptive and non-normative discipline, is limited to identifying what effectively makes people happy.
In support of education, quantum pedagogy, Positive Psychology explores the importance of the individual knowing how to correctly interpret the world and himself. Part of the individuals’ unhappiness results from wrong ways of interpreting things. What happens is that in certain situations we become unhappy because we enter a self-destructive spiral of subtly wrong thoughts about life and ourselves and the other thoughts that depress us more and more. Being able to detect and neutralize these thoughts is a fundamental step towards happiness, according to Positive Psychology. To be happy, the individual must therefore rely on Education and Positive Psychology. Quantum pedagogy represents an excellent contribution to achieving this goal.
REFERENCES
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* Fernando Alcoforado, 80, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
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