Para além da catequese: educação popular com crianças e adolescentes no cristianismo da libertação

Abstract

The present work sought to answer the following fundamental question: How did popular education with children and adolescents arise within liberation Christianity and what were their educational practices? For this, a temporal cross section was applied, between the years 1968 and 1984. This way of living the Christian faith in Brazil, in a context of military dictatorship, contributed significantly to the Brazilian political culture through liberating educational practices in small grassroots groups. However, the narratives and investigations in this regard reveal the production of very little literature in relation to the juvenile public. Even after more than fifty years of contributions to this libertarian Christianity and popular education practices of the Movement of Adolescents and Children (MAC), there is a great absence in this regard, despite the birth and evolution of this Movement occurred in close relations with the Ecclesial Base Communities (CEBs) and the Social Pastoral ministries. Therefore, the aim of this research was to investigate the origins and peculiarities of popular education with children and adolescents in liberation Christianity and how it came about. For this, the qualitative methodical procedures of analysis of abundant documentary sources (from the archives of the National Secretariat of the MAC and personal archives) were used and analyzes of interviews (life stories) with people who participated in such activities during the period in question, either as children / adolescents, or as an educator. Such sources were compared, opposed and brought to dialogue with each other. Three main concepts guided this work: children / adolescents as socio-historical subjects (Walter Benjamin and Manuel Sarmento); liberation Christianity as a faith committed to the social emancipation of the oppressed (Michel Löwy); popular education as a political teaching-learning at the service of the consciousness raising of those suffering injustice and the motivation for the emancipatory struggle (Paulo Freire, Carlos Rodrigues Brandão, Luiz Eduardo Wanderley and Oscar Jara). Benjamin's understandings of history and Certau’s comprehension everyday micro-resistance also guided this work as they contributed to overcoming the adult-centric view that is prevalent in Western society. Finally, the encounters and disagreements of popular education with Catholic catechesis were also analyzed, and a minor, however expressive way of treating and conceiving childhood within the Christian hierarchical institutions, beyond its traditional doctrinal-catechetical teaching.