Literacy and text, with Lev Tolstoy

Abstract

The article aims to communicate a discreet dialogue between Brazilian literacy practices and findings on the subject in the literature of Leo Tolstoy. Criticizing traditional methods, it argues in favor of practices that take the text – produced by children – as an artifact of creation and consumption in literacy. Of an essayistic and bibliographical nature, the article is divided into three parts. In the first part, the resource of estrangement is used in the record of some literacy practices that occurred in Brazil during the last century. In order to provide the necessary intonation to the text, we continue in search of theorists and writers who influenced each other. Next, we turn to Tolstoy and find, in a short story published over 150 years ago, narratives of literacy practices experienced by him and with which it is possible to reflect, in our country, on Freirean, discursive and dialogical literacy. Finally, we return to Tolstoy, and to the question that reverberates: “Who should learn to write from whom: the peasant children with us or we with the peasant children?”