A Rosa do Povo 2020-2021: um tempo entre parênteses

Abstract

This research presents an invitation to bring together two “periods of exception” that occur at different times in history. I am referring to the post-Second World War period, during which the poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade wrote his book "A Rosa do Povo", and the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, which recently affected the world. The expression "a time in parentheses" suggests that 2020-2021 was like a unique break in the school's usual routine, marked by significant changes in its operations, teaching methods, and social interactions. The study investigates the school curriculum experienced during this period through non-narcissistic autobiographical writing (Pinar, 2007), in which poetry, teaching and life experiences are intertwined in this effort to reconstruct memory. Carried out by an educator who, in the midst of individual and collective mourning, uses the “Currere method” (Pinar, 2007), composed of four phases: regressive, progressive, analytical and synthetic, stitching together fragments of memory, documents and news of the time, allowing us to perceive the association of the notion of school curriculum with planning for the future (Lemos, 2017), as an antidote to the fear of an uncertain future, which is closely linked to the same fears of the uncertainty of the future experienced during the pandemic. Identifying that although the pandemic has passed, it also left the fear of the gap produced and this concern in Rio's public schools is aggravated by the concept of pragmatic education that plagues our country, creating a vicious circle produced by neoliberalism: the fear of the past to which no if you want to return, the fear of the present that you don't want to live and the fear of the future, which is pure uncertainty. With the exercise of moving through the past, present and future, the unforeseen (Lemos, 2017) reveals itself as a product of the learning process, highlighting the ineptitude of designing the curriculum as future planning. As time passes, the restrictions imposed by the pandemic come to an end. However, there was no change in people's souls, we saw violence and inequality increase. In this context, the replacement of the concept of individualism with interdependence triggered by Butler (2022), which became evident during the pandemic, appears as a possible key to intelligibility to promote a more egalitarian society and through the “complex conversation” that the curriculum as Currere calls on all educators to practice (Pinar, 2007), could not only influence the school curriculum, but also contribute to transformations in the social sphere. Why not?