Political engagement and technical com petence: 20 years later

Abstract

This article re-reads the debate which happened in the 80’s about the relation between the educator’s political engagement and his technical competence. It stresses that the most emancipated ideas (as those proposed in Antonio Gramsci’s texts) took the Brazilian pedagogical ideas into its dimension of political engagement, which also contributed to electoral victories of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Laborers’ Party). In that time a certain gramscian trendy movement was reference and synonymous to the most emancipated and free ideas, but today in face of a complex and multifaced political reality it is necessary to deepen the reading of this author’s ideas. A diffuse ideology of the ‘left wing’ is no more a sufficient reference to political engagement. So this article tries to understand the new form of political compromise the educator and the intellectual in general need to carry on. For instance it’s necessary to redeem the value of doubt as a method; to understand the process of maturation of the democratic culture; to think again on the real process of ‘uninterested’ politics and reaffirm that all pedagogical act in itself has an implicit ethical political dimension, which means to put into question the bureaucratic compromise with political parties.