School Abbreviations

What is School?

It is the institution that provides the teaching process for students (students), with the aim of training and developing each individual in their cultural, social and cognitive aspects.

The word school comes from the Greek scholé, which means “leisure” – the same as “leisure or free time”. This meaning comes from the concept of school in Ancient Greece, which, unlike what we see today, was a meeting, a moment, in which Greek citizens took free time to discuss philosophy and some social behaviors.

The emergence and development of the school in the world

In 2000 BC, in the period of Ancient Greece, schools aimed to educate men in their integral formation, that is, to develop their ethics, political thought and their religious knowledge.

However, with the fall of Ancient Greece to Rome in 763 BC, schools began to have the function of training men with critical capacity, through teachings on philosophy, arithmetic, politics and arts, where the teacher (great philosophers) encouraged the construction of ideologies based on the social behavior of the time and not on their own knowledge.

During this period, the school formed only male people, considered Greco-Roman citizens, with the aim of making them leaders of the people, such as politicians or religious representatives.

The institution represented a constructive exchange of ideas, where people were free to develop their own thoughts and conclusions.

With the social and religious domination of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, the right to education became restricted only to the clerical elite, with other social classes being excluded from any knowledge or teaching taught.

The teachers at the time were the religious themselves, who taught to read and write, based on studies of the Catholic Church. Classes took place inside the monasteries, with children and adults sharing the same environment and teachings.

It was from the development of the economy in this period that the nobles realized the need to read, write and count for their business. The elite understood that with economic growth, they would increasingly need educated and skilled people in operating machines and conducting negotiations.

The school, then, takes on a new meaning: to train workers selected by the nobility to work in the labor market in favor of economic development.

The emergence of public education in the world

On October 28, 1717, the then despot of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm I, decreed compulsory education for children aged 5 to 12 in his country. However, the school institution at the time was still selective, that is, only a few students were chosen to have access to public education.

However, the greatest milestone in the history of public education took place during the French Revolution in 1789. In this year, France instituted the first state -run public school for French citizens.

Years later, in 1792, France also starred in another milestone in world education, its public schools were declared as secular, that is: free from any religious influence, mainly from the Catholic Church that dominated the general educational system until then.

The school as everyone’s right

With the emergence of public schools in Europe, other continents also adapted their education using the European model as an example.

However, it was only in the 20th century, precisely in 1948, that the United Nations declared schooling a right of every human being, guaranteed by Article 26 of the Declaration of Human Rights, as follows:

Every human being has the right to education. Instruction will be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental grades. Elementary instruction will be mandatory. Technical-professional education will be accessible to all, as will higher education, which is based on merit.

After this decree, it was the duty of the State to provide and maintain regular basic education, giving parents the right to choose the educational model that best suited and made sense to their children.

Type of schools

In Brazil, these educational models were gradually adopted over the years of national and international pedagogical studies. Currently, schools can follow one of the following lines:

Traditional School: this is the most common pedagogical line in Brazilian schools. The Traditional School places the teacher at the center of teaching, as the holder of all knowledge, and the student as a passive receiver of information. The teacher conveys the teaching clearly and assesses students through tests, assignments and homework, which act as a thermometer that assesses the level of knowledge acquired by the student in each subject.
Freiriana School: this line is based on the theory of one of the greatest Brazilian pedagogues, Paulo Freire. The Freiriana school defends the critical development of the student through practical actions within the classroom. Here, the teacher presents content to his students, taking into account their social and cultural experiences, as individual humans, making mutual learning between teacher and student. The central objective of the Freiriana School is to make the student know his power of transformation within the world. It was designed not to apply tests or any other assessment method, as it respects the individual’s pace and vision of learning.
Montessori School: created by the Italian educator Maria Montessori, the Montessori line has the central idea that the student can acquire knowledge independently, through the activities presented by the teacher in the classroom. Here, the teacher is like a guide and aims to help students to create a sense of responsibility for their own path of knowledge, focused solely on the reality of each one.
Constructivist School: in this pedagogical line, which has Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget as main inspirations, the student is the protagonist of his learning process. That is, education is not a simple transmission of knowledge, it works as a support, allowing students to create and experience their own learning process. As in the Freiriana school, tests or any other type of assessment are not applied here.
Waldorf School: it is a system based on the studies of Rudolf Steiner and aims at the integral development of the student, that is, not only his intellectual aspect, but also his bodily, mental and spiritual aspects. The direction given to the student here is “education for freedom”, developing them in their human sense, in favor of a full social life. A teacher is chosen to accompany students individually through all their cycles and there are also no assessments.

The emergence of schools in Brazil

The school in Brazil began with a religious sense, still in Colonial Brazil. In 1549 the Society of Jesus, formed by the Jesuits, arrived in Brazil using education to catechize the Indians, teaching them the Catholic religion.

Education in its fullest sense, with literacy and teaching of exact and human sciences, was directed only to the children of Portuguese nobles residing in Brazil or to priests, important religious figures.

Until the 19th century, schools in Brazil were unsystematic institutions, with traditional teaching and few physical places to house students. It was only in the “Era Vargas” that the school was declared a right for all citizens, guaranteed by the 1988 Constitution.

In the 20th century, many educators, with Paulo Freire, changed the direction of schools in Brazil, along with educational models, bringing new concepts to the school’s functions in the lives of citizens.

The functions of the school in the formation of the citizen

The school, as well as the family, has essential functions in the development and formation of individuals as citizens, professionals and especially as human beings. In addition to its practical duties such as literacy, the school also has three important missions in the lives of its students:

Socialize: prepare the individual for life in society, teaching local culture, symbols, politics and native language;
Humanize: show the individual the social, religious and cultural differences, making him able to live peacefully with the other;
Teaching: to literate and cognitively educate the individual, preparing him for the professional and academic world;
Develop critical sense: prepare the student to research, question and reflect on social, personal and political concepts, building their own opinions, escaping the possible alienation of common sense.

Division of Basic Education in Brazil

In Brazil, the basic education cycle is divided into:

Early Childhood Education: duration of 4 years, with students from 0 to 3 years old;
Preschool: duration of 3 years, with students from 4 to 6 years old;
Elementary School: duration of 9 years, with students from 6 to 14 years old;
High School: duration of 3 years, with students from 15 to 17 years old;

Each cycle can be made available by state schools (in the management of the Government of each state), municipal schools (in the management of Municipalities) or private schools (private management).

The importance of inclusive school in Brazil

One of the biggest challenges facing Brazilian schools today is the inclusion of people with disabilities. By the MEC (Ministry of Education) and by the Law of Directives and Bases of National Education , inclusive education is mandatory in Brazil, and it is the duty of schools and the State to provide projects that involve integration actions and teaching strategies that can meet everyone’s needs. the students.

However, the current scenario is still worrying about inclusion. Many schools do not have good facilities and even trained professionals who can teach and include students with disabilities.

School Without Party Movement

The Movimento Escola Sem Partido was created by prosecutor Miguel Nagib in 2004, motivated by his opinion against any kind of political or ideological propagation within Brazilian schools.

The project, considered by its creator as non-governmental and non-profit, aims to create means for teachers not to transfer or explain to their students their moral and political opinions, so that they are not influenced in their own conceptions..

This initiative became a bill in Rio de Janeiro in 2014 (PL 2974/2014), and from then on projects were presented in other states as well.

List of Acronyms Related to School