Revista Brasileira de Educação do Campo
Brazilian Journal of Rural Education
ARTIGO/ARTICLE/ARTÍCULO
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20873/uft.rbec.e10826
Tocantinópolis/Brasil
v. 5
e10826
10.20873/uft.rbec.e10826
2020
ISSN: 2525-4863
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The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the
Brazilian scenario: notes from Darcy Ribeiro
Dionei Ruã dos Santos
1
, Sidinei Pithan da Silva
2
, Maria Cristina Pansera de Araújo
3
1
Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul - UFFS. Ensino de Física. ERS 135 - Km 72, 200, Cx Postal 764. Erechim - RS. Brasil.
2, 3
Universidade Regional do Noroeste do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul - Unijuí.
Author for correspondence: dionei.santos@uffs.edu.br
ABSTRACT. The article analyzes the founding ideals of
universities directly influenced by Darcy Ribeiro as well as his
books and texts, aiming to diagnose their presence in
universities today. The text establishes some possible relations
with the project of the Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul
and the Interdisciplinary course in Rural Education, pointing out
possible marks of this author, at the same time rescuing his
concepts and updating them due to unprecedented fields of
possibilities, especially in the which refers to the entry and
permanence, in Higher Education, of peoples historically
excluded from society, as is the case of indigenous and rural
subjects.
Keywords: Rural Education, University Project, Popular
Education.
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
notes from Darcy Ribeiro...
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ISSN: 2525-4863
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A Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul no cenário
brasileiro: notas a partir de Darcy Ribeiro
RESUMO. O artigo analisa os ideais fundantes de
universidades influenciadas diretamente por Darcy Ribeiro bem
como seus livros e textos, objetivando diagnosticar sua presença
nas universidades da atualidade. O texto estabelece algumas
possíveis relações com o projeto da Universidade Federal da
Fronteira Sul e do curso Interdisciplinar em Educação do
Campo, apontando possíveis marcas desse autor, ao mesmo
tempo resgatando seus conceitos e atualizando-os em razão de
inéditos campos de possibilidades, especialmente no que se
refere ao ingresso e permanência, no Ensino Superior, dos povos
historicamente excluídos da sociedade, como é o caso de
indígenas e sujeitos do campo.
Palavras-chave: Educação do Campo, Projeto de Universidade,
Educação Popular.
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
notes from Darcy Ribeiro...
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La Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul en el escenario
brasileño: notas de Darcy Ribeiro
RESUMEN. El artículo analiza los ideales fundacionales de las
universidades directamente influenciadas por Darcy Ribeiro así
como sus libros y textos, con el objetivo de diagnosticar su
presencia en las universidades de hoy. El texto establece algunas
posibles relaciones con el proyecto de la Universidad Federal de
Fronteira Sul y el curso Interdisciplinario en Educación Rural,
señalando posibles marcas de este autor, al mismo tiempo
rescatando sus conceptos y actualizándolos debido a campos de
posibilidades sin precedentes, especialmente en el que se refiere
al ingreso y permanencia, en la Educación Superior, de pueblos
históricamente excluidos de la sociedad, como es el caso de los
sujetos indígenas y rurales.
Palabras clave: Educación Rural, Proyecto Universitario,
Educación Popular.
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
notes from Darcy Ribeiro...
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Introduction
Thinking about the university in a
country immersed in an ocean of cultural
diversity and pluralities, of a common
miscegenated genesis, which resulted in
unique subjects needing a conscientious
teaching intellect capable of meeting the
specificity of a Brazilian student body,
requires the ability to dialogue with
authors, who followed a path of struggle
for public schools and universities, which
meet the socioeconomic and cultural needs
of their people.
We understand, based on our
historical-cultural theoretical framework,
that understanding the social significance
of Brazilian universities and, in particular,
the federal university in which we conduct
our research, is fundamental to the
construction of the meaning of our actions
as teachers, especially in with regard to the
construction of the reasons for the
activities developed in the classroom.
The purpose of this article is to
analyze the founding ideals of universities
directly influenced by Darcy Ribeiro -
more specifically the Universidade de
Brasília (UNB) - as well as his books and
texts, in order to later diagnose their
presence in universities today. To this end,
we analyzed, more specifically, the project
of the Universidade Federal da Fronteira
Sul (UFFS), and the Interdisciplinary
Course in Rural Education, seeking to find
marks by this author and, at the same time,
rescue his concepts and update them due to
unprecedented fields of possibilities,
especially with regard to the entry and
permanence, in Higher Education, of
peoples historically excluded from society,
as is the case of indigenous and rural
subjects. In Vasconcellos' interpretation
(2015, p. 41), “Darcy Ribeiro differs from
Marxist authors because he dedicated
himself to the study of the Indian”.
According to him, “there were almost no
Marxists studying the ethnological issue”
(Vasconcellos, 2015, p. 41).
The research is carried out in the
context of teaching praxis, in a course in
Education in the Field - Natural Sciences at
UFFS. The study is characterized as an
essay, based on bibliographic and
documentary research (Gil, 2002). The
methodological approach, therefore,
favors, in a hermeneutic sense, the study of
some classic works by the studied author,
as well as the reading of commentators by
Darcy Ribeiro. He is also dedicated to
investigating some central documents that
help to characterize the emergency
scenario of UNB, UFFS and the Degree in
Rural Education.
The text that integrates the study is
organized in three parts, as a theoretical
support strategy to argue about the
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
notes from Darcy Ribeiro...
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2020
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relevance of Darcy Ribeiro's contributions
to think about the University in Brazil, as
well as to think about the challenges of
reflecting on Rural Education in the
university context. In the first, we
recovered the meanings about the idea of
“Necessary University” to Brazil in Darcy
Ribeiro. In the second, we discuss some
possible relations between the writings of
Darcy Ribeiro and the genesis at UFFS,
seeking to situate the interdisciplinary
course in Rural Education. And, in the
third, we analyze the challenges posed to
pedagogical practice in the
Interdisciplinary Course in Rural
Education (Natural Sciences) at UFFS.
We initially presented and analyzed
some aspects of the UNB project, which
expresses the utopian mentality of an
intellectual group about an academic,
educational, architectural and social
project, which is why it is called
“Necessary University” (Ribeiro, 1969),
which he proposed the refined investment
in scientific development, in an original,
national and autonomous structure, in
which the sciences could dialogue with
each other, as well as the knowledge and
the doing if they met again effectively,
towards the constitution of a people and a
sovereign nation. A nation that demands a
“real university”, Ribeiro expresses in his
speech - University for what?, which
allows “to dominate all human
knowledge”, allowing “the interaction of
the mathematician with the anthropologist,
the veterinarian with the economist, the
geographer with the astronomer”,
generating a “national center of scientific
and cultural creativity” (Ribeiro, 2018, p.
106).
Darcy Ribeiro and the Necessary
University in Brazil
We find in Darcy Ribeiro an iconic,
expressive and effective reference to
leverage reflections on universities in
Brazil. We aim to support the discussion
about the Brazilian university in Darcy
Ribeiro, an author who leads us to think of
Brazil in an original way, to perceive it
from the interior, differently from the
perspectives from the coast facing
outwards. Still, to think about a university
for its people, that contributes to the
resolution of economic and social
problems of a mixed population of blacks,
whites and indigenous people, who formed
under years of exploitation (Ribeiro, 1995).
The context of uncertainties in which
we live about the direction of our country,
as well expressed by Lilia Moritz
Schwarcz (2019) in her book entitled
Sobre o autoritarismo brasileiro, make the
works of this author fundamental, who
interprets Brazil from the particularities of
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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his education economic, social and
cultural. We understand that the problems
listed by Schwarcz (2019) in relation to
Brazilian authoritarianism, such as “the
myth of racial democracy”, and “hatred of
the different”, can also be interpreted from
the work of Ribeiro (1995). In addition to
his career as a professor, researcher and
writer, Darcy Ribeiro contributed
significantly to the construction of new
universities, which, generally, had the
objective of germinating changes, creating
an original university model, as the
foundation of “Universidade de Brasília
and the Universidade Estadual do Norte
Fluminense (UENF), and, in exile, with the
Universidade Nacional da Costa-Rica e a
Universidade de Argel” (Gomes, 2005, p.
66).
In the view of Ferraz and Santos
(2014, p. 325), Darcy Ribeiro “was part of
a generation of intellectuals and artists who
firmly believed that it was possible to build
a comprehensive cultural project for Brazil
and Latin America”. Helena Bomeny
(2001), in turn, when writing the work
Darcy Ribeiro: sociologia de um
indisciplinado, it understands it in the
unconventional sense of a citizenship from
Minas Gerais, of a pattern of social
sciences and even of an ideal of pedagogy.
According to her, Darcy Ribeiro, became
an undisciplined intellectual in the
Brazilian public agenda, pursuing, for 40
years, an intervention in educational policy
in line with the principles of the Escola
Nova movement, given her proximity to
Anísio Teixeira. This condition allows us
to understand Darcy Ribeiro's enthusiasm
for education and the value of the School
and the University, as well as his
appreciation for democracy. In her words,
the author defines it this way: “Darcy
Ribeiro, the undisciplined pedagogue, was,
in my view, the last member of Escola
Nova in Brazil” (Bomeny, 2001, p. 26).
The study by Lôbo, Vogas and Torres
(2008), named Darcy Ribeiro: o brasileiro,
expresses well the relations between
Anísio Teixeira and Darcy Ribeiro in their
struggle for public school since the mid-
50s of the 20th century, and their
subsequent collaboration in the Instituto
Nacional de Pesquisas Educacionais
(Inep) during the Juscelino Kubitschek
government, and even the delivery of the
“ambitious project of the Universidade de
Brasília” for the then president (Lôbo,
Vogas & Torres, 2008, p. 48).
In his work A universidade
necessária, written during his period in
exile in Uruguay, Darcy Ribeiro (1969)
took a stand against the mere reflexive
modernization of the University. He
conferred a trace of university autonomy
consistent with a nation project, which was
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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necessary in order to “transform society
itself”, generating “the condition of a
people for itself, owner of the command of
its destiny and willing to integrate itself in
the emergent civilization as an autonomous
nation” (Ribeiro, 1969, p. 10). In fact, the
book's writing denounces the minority
interests of a ruling class that imposed its
interests to the detriment of the total
population. In its version, this new critical
awareness is what leads us to see the
existing as unnatural, and to open up to a
new possibility of thinking and
transforming Brazil (Ribeiro, 1969).
Upon returning from his exile to
Brazil, and initially devoted to basic
education, Darcy Ribeiro also dedicated
himself to building Universidade Estadual
do Norte Fluminense (Uenf), focused on a
new humanism, compatible with
technological society, the University of the
Third Millennium, according to what
appears in its guiding plan. This institution
was organized with a multiple structure,
composed of integrated centers of basic
sciences, experimental centers of
technology, complementary centers and a
technological park.
According to the original plan, the
integrated centers consisted of 26
laboratories, which aimed to enable the
study to learn to learn. The programs
aimed to combine, from the beginning,
academic knowledge with practical skills.
The curricula included a basic and a
professional cycle. The first was made up
of general education and pre-vocational
training materials, associated with
innovative materials to expand humanistic
training. Students should participate in at
least two seminars, one on Brazilian issues
and problems and the other on theories of
society and culture (Gomes, 2005).
When writing O povo brasileiro: a
formação e o sentido do Brasil, Darcy
Ribeiro makes clear the mark of this
people, distinct from all the others, lacking
an education thought in this context.
We are new people still struggling to
make ourselves as a new human race
that never existed before. Much more
difficult and painful task, but also
much more beautiful and
challenging. In fact, what we are is a
new Rome. Late and tropical Rome
(Ribeiro, 1995, p. 454).
The concern was to propose a
university planned by the Brazilian people
and for the Brazilian people, no longer
influenced by foreign countries in a
decontextualized way, as we lacked an
education that spoke to the interior of
Brazil, to a social mass formed by
centuries of exploitation, in a country that
was a great “mill to grind people”.¹
We are building ourselves in the
struggle to flourish tomorrow as a
new civilization, mestizo and
tropical, proud of itself. Happier,
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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because more suffered. Better,
because it incorporates more
humanities. More generous, because
it is open to coexistence with all
races and all cultures and because it
is based in the most beautiful and
luminous province on earth (Ribeiro,
1995, p. 455).
It is worth remembering the context
in which Darcy Ribeiro operated: an
intellectually very teeming political
environment. Several organized sectors of
Brazilian society pointed to the possibility
of a self-propelled development of the
Brazilian nation. “In other words, a
development that was not marked by the
heteronomy of the country's asymmetric
relations with the world economy” (Leher,
2017, p. 148). This political-intellectual
movement was not historically punctual, as
it reverberates, in universities, in several
later movements, with the same demands,
now recontextualized.
Darcy Ribeiro publishes in 1962, in a
special edition sponsored by the Ministry
of Education and Culture, about a year
after Law No. 3,998, which authorized the
Executive Branch to institute the Fundação
Universidade de Brasília, a book
containing the new university's
organizational plan and the statements of
educators and scientists on the text of the
law.
2
For Darcy Ribeiro (2011), Brazil did
not have a true university tradition to
defend and preserve, because the Brazilian
university, strictly speaking, “differently
from what happened in other countries in
the Americas in which they were created
since the 16th century, only in 1920,
already in the 20th century, was
instituted”(Almeida Júnior, 2011, p. 7).
This, like the ones that followed,
originated from the nominal congregation
of preexisting schools, constituting a
rectory set up for centralized budget and
administration services, for solemn acts of
“opening and closing the school year and
for debate, still timid. , about the
infeasibility of the structure itself and the
need for university reform ” (Ribeiro,
2011, p. 11).
Perhaps it would be more appropriate
to say installation than reform. Nor is
there a university in our higher
education. Our tradition is that of
independent schools, brutally
defending their autonomy, organized
to receive students graduated from
secondary school and segregate them
to provide professional training in a
few training modalities, authorized
by formal and strict legislation.
(Ribeiro, 2011, p. 12).
The task of designing the UnB,
according to Darcy Ribeiro (2011),
proposed the challenge of building the
“necessary university”, which meant
recognizing that Brasília, a city created in
the center of the country, where the
government of the republic was installed,
would inevitably need a university as a
cultural center, which had, according to
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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Darcy (2011, p. 18), “the entire domain of
human knowledge and that cultivates it not
as an act of academic enjoyment or vanity,
but with the aim of, mounted on that
knowledge , think of Brazil as a problem ”.
It is not a question of whether or not
it is appropriate to create another
university, nor of examining the
recovery capacity of our higher
schools, but of recognizing that,
constituting a city in the center of the
country and installing the
Government of the Republic, it has
become inevitable the institution of a
cultural nucleus there and that a
university cannot miss (Ribeiro,
2011, p. 18).
According to Darcy Ribeiro, the
“necessary university” was a Brazilian
university focused on problems in Brazil,
of interest to its people. These ideals
marked the creation of UnB, whose project
proposed a university designed “on the
same basis as the teaching and research
centers that are revolutionizing the modern
world” (Ribeiro, 2011, p. 19).
In the book Universidade de
Brasília, Darcy Ribeiro himself exposes
the UnB organization project, but in order
to assess the scope of this project, he
brings to the publication pronouncements
from several educators who had expressed
themselves about the proposal, constituting
a source of better understanding and
acceptance that she received from her of
Brazilian intelligence at the time. For our
purpose of finding traces of these ideas,
and even substantial presence in Brazilian
universities created over the years that
followed, such as UFFS, for example,
these become precious testimonies. The
following testimonies were signed:
Almeida Júnior, Jayme Abreu, Florestan
Fernandes, Milton da Silva Rodrigues,
Anísio Teixeira, Jairo Ramos, Fernando
Henrique Cardoso, Leopoldo Nachbin,
José Leite Lopes, Celso Furtado, Paulo
Sawaya, Maria Yedda Leite Linhares,
Oracy Nogueira, Oswaldo Gusmão, Walter
Oswaldo Cruz and Jacques Danon. ³
Professor Almeida Júnior
4
refers to
the work of Darcy Ribeiro, when designing
the UnB, as the work of a leader, as an
illustrious renovator, who seeks to bring
down everything in this poorly maintained
area in the country even before building
the new one. In the analysis of the present
conditions, there was only the possibility
of a "new university", and it is convenient
to speak of "establishment" and not
"reform". The professor claims to agree
almost everything with Darcy Ribeiro,
pointing out, in the testimony, mainly, the
view - which differs from his - about the
institution of the chair.
The evils that Darcy Ribeiro lists,
and which in fact unhappiness certain
sectors of our higher education,
reside much less in the institution of
the chair than in the personality of a
few university professors (who do
not properly cultivate their plot of
land) and also in the inertia of the
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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professors organs that turn a blind
eye to abuse (Almeida Júnior, 2011,
p. 76).
Regarding the system's curriculum in
force, Professor Almeida Júnior (2011)
highlights that the “architect of
Universidade de Brasília” (referring to
Darcy Ribeiro) formulates two criticisms:
the imposition of identical standards for
each professional category and the rigidity
of normal curricula, which prevent
curricular combinations appropriate to the
new professions. For Almeida Júnior
(2011), the criticisms proceed, but to a
certain extent.
... for a few years now, thanks to the
new jurisprudence of the National
Education Council, there has been a
loosening of the sacred respect for
the old standards ... (as can be seen in
relation to certain medical schools for
example). On the other hand, there is
nothing to prevent (except the lack of
funds) that higher education institutes
operate postgraduate specialization
courses; because the certificates that
correspond to them do not grant new
rights to the respective holders and,
therefore, are independent of the
registration (Almeida Júnior, 2011, p.
77).
On the other hand, the testimony of
Professor Jaime Abreu5 is an enthusiastic
speech with the new university and the
possibility of debating the organizational
structure most appropriate to that
university, discussing which principles
should govern it and incorporating the
basic considerations of Brazilian aspects
into connections with university models
other than universal culture are needed.
The author asks: What directions will the
new Universidade de Brasília, at this
crucial crossroads of your institution,
where will there be an inevitable boundary
of guidelines? Will you get closer to the
traditional Western European model or will
you look for reasonable inspirations in the
new American model? Will you
incorporate the best of both in relation to
the Brazilian national problem?
Initially and largely receiving the
European cultural contribution, by
rebuilding it in its new world, it was
a deliberate objective of American
education to "de-Europeanize" the
new citizens from there, in relation to
old cultural molds of origin, to
enculturate them in the new world in
training process (Almeida Júnior,
2011, p. 85).
Jaime Abreu concludes his testimony
by declaring that all his desirous thinking,
around the new University, encompasses
thinking and rethinking his mission and his
task. In other words, the University should
be able to effectively materialize its
“serious responsibilities, as Anísio Teixeira
says (The university and human freedom):
in the redirection of social life, towards the
democratic and modern formation of
Brazilian culture” (Almeida Júnior, 2011,
p. 88).
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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Seeking to understand how these
ideas are today materialized in the
universities created more recently, and
with the intention of locating the influence
of this intellectual movement, which
originated the Universidade de Brasília, in
the universities that continued to be
created, is that we analyze the project of
Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul.
Darcy Ribeiro and the genesis of
Universidade Federal da Fronteira
Suland the Interdisciplinary Course in
Rural Education
As the 21st century entered, social
organizations in the three southern states of
Brazil (Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio
Grande do Sul), which sought to build a
different university, won the Universidade
Federal da Fronteira Sul (UFFS), with the
challenge of thinking about a public and
popular university that would contribute to
reducing the historical educational gap in a
country made up of centuries of
exploitation of its people (UFFS, 2010a).
To face these challenges, the Pro-
University movement has invested in
building a higher education
institution that is different from the
existing experiences in the region.
On the one hand, the public and free
character sets it apart from other
institutions in the region, whether
private or community, supported by
monthly fees. On the other hand, this
proposal understood that to face the
challenges encountered, more than a
public university was needed, it was
necessary to build a public and
popular university (UFFS, 2010a, pp.
12-13).
According to the document consulted
(UFFS, 2010a), was through the universal
program of access to higher education
“Programa Universidade para Todos”
(Prouni), of the Program to Support
Federal University Restructuring and
Expansion Plans (Reuni) and the MEC
Higher Education Interiorization Program,
which made it possible to propose
relatively daring projects by a quality
university and, at the same time, available
to everyone, especially those historically
excluded audiences.
In the process of fighting for the
creation of UFFS, interstate coordinations
were formed that developed debates in the
form of seminars, meetings, lectures,
mobilizations and marches, involving the
various sectors of society at different
levels, criticizing the conventional and
traditional universities, which, it normally
reproduces and maintains the exclusion
system present in today's society.
Criticizing and looking for alternatives to
these patterns that strengthen dominant
sectors of this society, which deny access
to knowledge and space to the most
impoverished strata, the proposal of this
new university was based on a democratic,
humanizing understanding, contextualized
in the local reality, committed to the social
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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justice and capable of significantly
contributing to the development processes
of each location where it was installed.
Thus, on September 15, 2009, UFFS was
created by Law No. 12,029, covering 396
municipalities in the Mercosul Frontier
Mesoregion: Southwest of Paraná, West of
Santa Catarina and Northwest of Rio
Grande do Sul (UFFS, 2010a).
From the debates, the Institutional
Pedagogical Project (PPI) is built,
establishing that the University must be
“committed to the sustainable and solidary
development of the region” and that its
courses should “privilege the vocations of
the regional economy, aiming at integrated
regional development, with family farming
as a structuring and dynamic sector in the
development process” (UFFS, 2010b, p.
22).
The principles, found in the UFFS
statute, are directly linked to those
defended by Darcy Ribeiro:
I - free education;
II - education as a public good;
III - equity of conditions of access
and permanence of different social
subjects in Higher Education;
IV - commitment to inclusion and
social justice and combating social
and regional inequalities;
V - defense of dignity and human
rights and combating prejudices of
any kind;
VI - respect for the freedom to learn,
teach, research and disseminate
thought, art and knowledge, and
appreciation of tolerance in accepting
divergent academic positions and
attitudes;
VII - link between education, work
and social practices and valuing
extra-school experience;
VIII - universality of knowledge,
supported by interdisciplinarity and
pluralism of ideas and pedagogical
concepts;
IX - inseparability between teaching,
research and extension;
X - integration between general, area
and specific training in the curricula;
XI - permanent dialogue with the
regional community within the scope
of the Institution;
XII - regional and national cultural,
artistic, scientific, technological and
socioeconomic development, in a
sustainable manner;
XIII - democratic and ethical
management in dealing with public
affairs;
XIV - legality, impersonality,
morality, impartiality, publicity,
efficiency, effectiveness and
effectiveness (UFFS, 2010b, p. 6).
The purposes are also:
I - teaching, from the
democratization of access and
permanence in the Institution, aiming
at the formation of academic and
professional excellence, initial and
continuous, in the different fields of
knowledge, stimulating cultural
creation, the development of the
scientific spirit and critical thinking
reflective;
II - scientific research and
investigation in all fields of
knowledge, especially in topics
related to scientific-technological,
social, economic, ethical, aesthetic,
cultural, political and environmental
issues;
III - university extension, open to the
participation of the population,
aiming at the joint production of
advances, achievements and benefits
resulting from cultural and artistic
creation and scientific and
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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technological research (UFFS,
2010b, p. 7).
The Law of Guidelines and Bases of
Brazilian Education (LDB 9.394/96), also
popularly called the Law Darcy Ribeiro
(for being one of its main formulators), is
the legislation that regulates the
educational system - public or private - in
Brazil. LDB 9.394/96 reaffirms the right to
education that is guaranteed by the Federal
Constitution. In its article 43, it presents
the purposes of higher education:
I - stimulate cultural creation and the
development of the scientific spirit
and reflective thinking;
II - train graduates in different areas
of knowledge, able to enter
professional sectors and participate in
the development of Brazilian society,
and collaborate in their continuous
training;
III - encourage research and scientific
investigation, aiming at the
development of science and
technology and the creation and
dissemination of culture, and, thus,
develop the understanding of man
and the environment in which he
lives;
V - promote the dissemination of
cultural, scientific and technical
knowledge that constitute the
heritage of humanity and
communicate knowledge through
teaching, publications or other forms
of communication;
V - arouse the permanent desire for
cultural and professional
improvement and enable the
corresponding implementation,
integrating the knowledge that is
being acquired in an intellectual
structure systematizing the
knowledge of each generation;
VI - stimulate knowledge of the
problems of the present world, in
particular national and regional ones,
provide specialized services to the
community and establish a reciprocal
relationship with it;
VII - promote extension, open to the
participation of the population,
aiming at the dissemination of the
achievements and benefits resulting
from cultural creation and scientific
and technological research generated
at the institution;
VIII - act in favor of the
universalization and improvement of
basic education, through the training
and qualification of professionals, the
carrying out of pedagogical research
and the development of extension
activities that bring together the two
school levels.
Notoriously, we can find in the
Interdisciplinary Course in Rural
Education: Natural Sciences, the challenge
and, in large part, a search for the
materiality of these objectives, principles
and purposes, which, as stated, bring
aspects and ideas of Darcy Ribeiro.
The Interdisciplinary Course in Rural
Education
We analyzed the points of
approximation between the UFFS Field
Education course project and the ideal
university required, as conceived by Darcy
Ribeiro, seeking to contribute to the
construction and understanding of the
social meaning of this course. The Rural
Education course has always been linked
to the struggle of social movements, and,
among the commitments assumed by
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in
favor of overcoming social and regional
inequalities, there is access and
permanence in Higher Education,
especially for the most excluded
population in the countryside and the city.
This university project seeks to contribute
to the presence of popular classes in the
university and to the collective
construction of a sustainable development
project for the region, whose structural axis
is family farming. Therefore, it seeks to
contribute to the transformation of reality
as, opposing the reproduction of
inequalities, it allows the search for
alternative methods and projects with a
more engendered meaning in the context of
the region (UFFS, 2013).
With its history deeply related to the
struggles of popular social movements in
the region, a place of dense fabric of social
organizations and the cradle of some of the
most important popular movements in the
country, UFFS sought to formulate a
university project that, for its
concretization, requires countless efforts
towards overcoming historical
contradictions. In this sense, the process
experienced in the construction of the
university project comes close to the
method that generated the concept that we
know as Countryside Education, especially
with social movements (UFFS, 2013).
The debate around Rural Education,
which took off in the 1990s, brings some
fundamental elements of discussion - field,
education and public policies - and can
support the elaboration of projects based
on educational theories and existing
concepts: Popular Education, Historical-
Critical Pedagogy, Socialist Pedagogy and
the construction of “Pedagogies of Rural
Education”. Thus, looking for an education
that can allow and guarantee the access and
permanence of its student audience, as well
as providing the practical-theory-practice
relationship experienced in its social and
cultural environment, it was proposed to
organize this course (UFFS, 2013).
It is also necessary to note that in the
vicinity of UFFS Campus Erechim there
are 5 quilombola communities located in
the cities of São Valentim and Sertão, and
12 indigenous areas located in Água Santa,
Benjamin Constant do Sul, Cacique Doble,
Charrua, Erebango, Getúlio Vargas,
Nonoai, Ronda Alta and Sananduva. In
each indigenous community there is an
elementary school that also needs trained
teachers to meet the demands of this
population, who live in the rural area,
producing their lives through agricultural
and artisanal work. With the knowledge
that it needs to be a school - whether from
the countryside, indigenous or quilombola
- that considers local knowledge and social
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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practice, and that establishes relationships
with the scientific knowledge produced
throughout the history of humanity, the
course project (which form teachers for
these schools) understands that the land
must be the key element, and the culture,
the struggles and the history of the
countryside, constitute the starting point
for the work in the classroom (UFFS,
2013).
This perspective, indicated in the
course design, shows that the themes to be
explored at school need to be linked to the
world of work and the development of the
field. Also, the methodology used in
teaching is pointed out as necessary to be
adapted to the reality of the field,
facilitating the “interface with the
emphasis of this training (Rural
Education), knowledge that parents,
students, technicians, community leaders
have about the different themes in the area
of Natural Sciences” (UFFS, 2013, p. 27).
We see in the Rural Education course
a conquered space of struggle and
continuous reconstruction to ensure the
right to a specific education to the subject
of the countryside, of indigenous and
quilombola communities, in short, of the
Brazilian people, who deserve an academic
space that overcomes the gap historically
imposed, discussion qualified by Darcy
Ribeiro.
In this sense, the course faces the
challenge of understanding the specificities
of these subjects that make up its student
body, and develop teaching and learning
strategies that, in fact, are significant and
respect diversity, a fundamental feature of
the course. The historical-cultural
perspective contributes, in this attempt, to
take into account the social aspect of these
subjects. "Darcy Ribeiro sometimes fumed
against teachers who 'pretend to teach and
students who pretend to learn'" (Gomes,
2005, p. 90). Contributions from this
perspective can help to reduce the risk of
alienated teaching as well as alienated
learning, leading students to understand the
real reason for what they develop in the
classroom with regard to social senses and
meanings. It is important to highlight that
one of the failures of the Brazilian public
school, in the interpretation of Darcy
Ribeiro, has been that of not considering
and creating a school that dialogues with
the popular classes (Ribeiro, 2018;
Martinazzo, Silva & Luft, 2020).
The course in Rural Education has a
curricular organization that suggests the
transformation of conventional practices,
strategies and methodologies to build
training that meets the demands and
specificities of its students.
The curriculum composition
considers the structure adopted by the
institution, since it already has a
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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course of this nature. However, the
organization of educational spaces
and times will be developed
following the precepts of Pedagogy
of Alternation, allowing a greater
insertion of field workers (UFFS,
2013, p. 41).
This option for an alternating
organization requires an effort by the
faculty to appropriate, problematize and
propose a different method. In this way,
moments of reflection were outlined whose
core is the planning, elaboration and
collective organization of the so-called
Educational Times - University Time (TU)
and Community Time (TC) -, which
underlie the alternation methodology
(UFFS, 2013). With the development of
the classes, Community Time allows the
university to get closer to the communities,
which can contribute to the context of
teaching practices, with the potential to
achieve an effective inclusion of these
subjects and their peers in the training
process.
Another challenge of the course is
interdisciplinarity. Carrying out an
interdisciplinary training in a universe as
complex as that which involves the course
- “field education”, “natural sciences”,
“indigenous” -, is a task that requires the
intellectual effort of the entire faculty,
seeking organization, the objectives and
methodology of this doing. One of the
main challenges to be faced in this project
is precisely related to interdisciplinary
practice.
Although entangled in the boundaries
of the disciplines that provide
theoretical and methodological
support, the areas represented in the
course, with a focus on Natural
Sciences, due to their different
specificities, should create spaces and
times to develop proposals for
pedagogical intervention, in the
perspective of interdisciplinarity,
concretizing in practice the
interdisciplinary attitude in rural
school (UFFS, 2013, p. 30).
At the same time, if the objective is
achieved, it can be configured with great
potential to meet the specificities of the
subjects that make up the student body:
In this sense, interdisciplinarity
presents itself as a primary way to
promote an integrated and articulated
formation with the social, political,
economic and cultural reality, which
always requires more citizen,
conscious, critical, reflective,
emancipatory formation (UFFS,
2013, p. 45).
It is crucial to highlight the limits
and challenges identified in the process of
setting up this course.
Some contradictions must be
announced in this context. According to
Molina (2015, p. 158), “the risks that have
been perceived in some Higher Education
courses offered in Alternation for subjects
in the field have referred to the type of
practice of Community Time”. Often
times, Community Time has been ignored
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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as a time and space for learning, taking
into account only school time (in our case
named University Time). According to the
author, without intentionality and action
planning in these pedagogical spaces,
which are closely related to the conditions
of life and work in the field, “the tensions
and contradictions of the material
production of life that occur in them end
up not being incorporated into the
dynamics of the curriculum of graduation,
these issues being absent from subsequent
School Times” (Molina, 2015, p. 158).
This limitation is sometimes
observed, incurring in the use of this
space/time for the mere accomplishment of
tasks, such as a list of exercises or works
strictly linked to University Time. We
believe that the most determining factor of
these limitations is the lack of knowledge
of the concept of alternation, or of its
historical production, since most teachers
of the teaching staff are trained only in
their specific area, not previously
transitioning through the concepts and
history of education the field.
If, on the one hand, Alternation has
immense potential to reframe the
processes of knowledge production,
in situations in which an intense
exchange of learning times and
spaces is promoted, in which the
different dimensions of life are
integrated into the processes on the
production of knowledge, on the
other hand, if disregarding the
assumptions of valuing the
knowledge of the subjects and
integrating material production in the
teaching-learning processes, and the
non-presence of the University in
different types of activities in
Community Time, the Alternation in
Higher Education loses a relevant
part of its meaning (Molina, 2015, p.
158).
We understand that the wealth of
possibilities that exist in the context of
Community Time is precisely what can
contribute to breaking with the processes
of alienation.
... the contradictions ... in the
university context, with the presence
of social groups previously not
considered and that denounce the
weaknesses and incapacities of the
institutions, in our view, it
contributes to the exercise of
participation and construction of a
democratic project. In this way, it is
possible to recognize the novelty of
the presence of these courses in the
academic space, as long as they do
not end in themselves, becoming
palliative or light answers to a claim.
Combined with other groups and
movements, they can contribute to
the struggle for education, in its
broad and universal sense (Mohr,
2018, p. 185).
It is certain that these historical
contradictions will be present in Brazilian
universities, even more so in a course like
Rural Education. To a certain degree,
however, Rural Education courses remain
distanced from other courses and,
sometimes, from the University itself as a
whole. We believe that this distance is due
to its peculiar and singular form of
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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organization and functioning, including its
distinct student body, which could, even,
exponentially enrich the other reflective
processes in the university scope.
An alternative that seeks to
contribute in the meantime in the course in
which we build the data, is the
organization of the integrating projects,
which articulate with the University Time,
Community Time and the curricular
components of each phase, organized in
the perspective of teaching by solving
contextualized problems in the
communities. This strategy brings to its
core another issue that has already been
identified as challenging:
interdisciplinarity.
The interdisciplinary character was
part of the methodological strategies
in the discussion of the first-Degree
courses in Rural Education, however,
this articulation between disciplines
presents some resistance on the part
of the professors who work in the
courses of public universities. With
this panorama in mind, some
questions are presented that reveal
the contradictions between
educational purposes and the way
society is structured: How is it
possible to articulate a formation that
conceives extended educational times
and an integrated non-disciplinary
conception, in a society that
increasingly more specializes and
fragments knowledge? Or yet, how is
it possible to deal with conflicts and
mediations between specific and
universal knowledge within
university courses and institutions?
These are questions that can hinder
the progress of the courses. However,
we understand that they add aspects
that can be translated into new
debates, reflections and proposals,
one of the social roles of the
university (Mohr, 2018, pp. 184-
185).
We understand that the organization
of the course in integrating
seminars/integrating projects allows
advancing in discussions about
interdisciplinarity, at the same time that it
faces the fragmented reality of the
disciplines' specialties, a fact resulting
from a historical and cultural construction,
permanently questioned. Therefore, the
highlighted focus, starting from the work
of Darcy Ribeiro, allows us to think that
this interdisciplinarity requires us to
understand the historical constitution of the
Brazilian people in their complexity and
cultural, social and economic
contradiction, with a view, above all, to
help build a sovereign people-nation,
which means producing a pedagogical
practice capable of breaking with
alienating modes of teaching and
conservative views of the world and
society.
Final considerations
In this brief review of some of Darcy
Ribeiro's ideas about the role and meaning
of the university in Brazilian society, we
seek to identify some of these ideals in
Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
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(UFFS) and in the Interdisciplinary degree
course in Rural Education - Natural
Sciences.
As a conclusion to the reflections, we
highlight the power of Darcy Ribeiro's
work and involvement for a sense of a
University that thinks the problem of
Brazil - a University that at the same time
aims to distribute and democratize a
universal culture, as well as capable of
creating a critical spirit of a nation-people
in search of its destiny. In this double
sense, both the universal developed for the
Brazilian University and that of creating in
students an ability to problematize and
think about the country, its problems, its
people, its history, its culture, its destinies,
we see a current thought of Darcy Ribeiro
to help think about a task for the
University in the middle of the 21st
century, since part of the authoritarianisms,
and of the social exclusion formats in
Brazil, remain present, as evidenced by
Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (2019).
In the Rural Education course, within
the scope of teaching natural sciences, this
relationship with the popular and
democratic education project, created for
UFFS, maintains a link that can be
enhanced by the UNB project and the
ideals proclaimed in terms of identity, to
the extent that university culture
constitutes a potential collection of
knowledge to reinvent Brazil and, in it, the
peoples, who need to define themselves
and create ways of producing life in a
sustainable way.
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Notes
1 Quote by Darcy Ribeiro on the context of
exploitation and oppression of the Brazilian people.
2 Universidade de Brasília. Projeto de organização.
Brasília: Editora Universidade de Brasília, 2011.
3 The journal Anhembi, directed by professor Paulo
Duarte, published, in its numbers 126, 127 and 128,
corresponding to the months of May, June and July
1961, statements by several educators about the
structure and organization of the Universidade de
Brasília.
4 Law School of Universidade de São Paulo.
5 Coordinator of the Educational Studies and
Research Division of the Brazilian Center for
Educational Research.
Article Information
Received on October 23th, 2020
Accepted on November 09th, 2020
Published on December, 4th, 2020
Author Contributions: The author were responsible for
the designing, delineating, analyzing and interpreting the
data, production of the manuscript, critical revision of the
content and approval of the final version published.
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian scenario:
notes from Darcy Ribeiro...
Tocantinópolis/Brasil
v. 5
e10826
10.20873/uft.rbec.e10826
2020
ISSN: 2525-4863
21
Conflict of Interest: None reported.
Orcid
Dionei Ruã dos Santos
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4757-1161
Sidinei Pithan da Silva
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6400-4631
Maria Cristina Pansera de Araújo
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2380-6934
How to cite this article
APA
Santos, D. R., Silva, S. P., & Araújo, M. C. P. (2020). The
Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian
scenario: notes from Darcy Ribeiro. Rev. Bras. Educ.
Camp., 5, e10826.
http://dx.doi.org/10.20873/uft.rbec.e10826
ABNT
SANTOS, D. R.; SILVA, S. P.; ARAÚJO, M. C. P. The
Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul in the Brazilian
scenario: notes from Darcy Ribeiro. Rev. Bras. Educ.
Camp., Tocantinópolis, v. 5, e10826, 2020.
http://dx.doi.org/10.20873/uft.rbec.e10826