O DEVER DE LEMBRAR PARA HUMANIZAR

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impacts on human development of the project of forgetting initiated during Brazil’s dictatorial and contemporary periods by neoliberal rationality, advocating a return to Freirean liberating education as an antidote to violence and the commodification of education. The paper is the result of research conducted in the Doctoral Program in Education (PPGE/UFPB) and of debates held in the classes of the elective course “State and Educational Policy.” The study draws on scholarly references from the field of Memory, such as Halbwachs (2006) and Le Goff (1996), and adopts, as a methodological framework. The indicial paradigma (Ginzburg, 1989), linked to Paulo Freire’s Liberating Pedagogy. This dialogue seeks to understand the consolidation of historical erasure and silencing—structural elements of the Brazilian educational field—from the dictatorship to the present day. The paper argues that the technocracy established during the authoritarian period laid the foundation for neoliberal managerialization, which, under the guise of modernization, undermines the critical dimension of human development. The concluding reflections assert that the duty to remember constitutes an insurgent practice of resistance, essential for rehumanizing the school, reconstructing collective memory, and reaffirming education as a practice of freedom.