Educação: os valores e as pessoas (Entrevista com Nílson José Machado)

Abstract

Nílson José Machado, professor of the College of Education at USP, in an exclusive interview to Comunicação & Educação, talks about his intellectual trajectory, about his interest in Mathematics, Philosophy and, most especially, in Education. He discusses the nature of the educational system crisis and claims that a major part of the problem lies in the lack of clarity and discussion, with the society, about the values and on the project that is desired for Education. He criticizes the excessive amount of documents aimed at guiding the teacher's performance in the classroom and stresses the importance of the school being rooted into its community. He also stresses the need there is to valuing the teacher professionally, from the point of view of both work and wages, as a way to improve teaching quality. He supports automatic promotion for the student, but disagrees with the manner in which this measure was implanted. To him, Education for work must be guided by the importance of integral and complete training, condemning specialization. He finalizes his statements talking about citizenship and about the important points to be considered by Education for the third millennium.