A NOÇÃO DE CIÊNCIA E EDUCAÇÃO NO ESPIRITISMO

Abstract

This paper, Science and Education notions in Spiritism, studies spiritism, a doctrine with scientific, philosophical and religious content expounded by Allan Kardec in the 19th century. (Allan Kardec was the nom de plume of Hypollite León-Denizard Rivail, a Catholic French scientist, thinker and educator who followed the Pestalozzi theory.). This paper presents his doctrine and also analyses its viability as a didactic-pedagogical program. It s a theoreticalbibliographical research mainly based on Kardec`s works. Spiritism presents information about man, nature, the origin and the destiny of the worlds, the material and spiritual spheres, God and Christian religious principles based on trance communications received by ``mediums``. It emphasizes moral education and it focuses on persons as immortal spirits in constant evolution through consecutive lives (reincarnation). Spiritism appeared as part of a large surge of Spiritualism which also included experiences in magnetism and hypnotism. Kardec states that he did his research according to the predominant positivist model, which implies in experimental and empirical observation within an inductive-deductive thought process, so within the third state of knowledge proposed by Comte (three-state theory ). As all the spiritism content was dictated by spirits it is said that this is not Kardec s doctrine but the spirits`. Brazil, the largest spiritistic country in the world, received spiritism mainly as a religion but during the 19th and 20th centuries isolated educational experiences occurred. These experiences failed due to the lack of financial and human resources. Nowadays some Brazilian spiritistic thinkers try to elaborate an educational spiritistic proposal related to a spiritistic pedagogy. However, these theories, as presented, seem to be impractical considering that they propose a religious humanist public education to Brazil which has a public educational system directed by the Ministry of Education. Besides, spiritism is about the education of the spirit, of the individual man, the immortal being whose goal is, after consecutive lives, to became moral and achieve perfection meeting God. So, a project of spiritistic Pedagogy for the Brazilian public education system needs more research, financial resources, and, above all, concrete and practical experiences that can show spiritism as a viable praxis for the educational system.