Celebrating Science and Lifelong Learning – 14/7/2022 – Claudia Costin

On the eighth of the month, we celebrate two related events that invite us to reflect on a Brazil engulfed in challenges: National Science Day and the 101st anniversary of a great thinker in education, Edgar Moran.

In the first case, it is a tribute to researchers and scientists who develop knowledge about how nature and society work and, in turn, make life improvements, mitigate risks, or solve problems.

The date was chosen because on July 8, 1948, the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC), a civilian entity dedicated to the defense of scientific and technological progress and educational development in Brazil, was created. Since its establishment, SBPC has played an important role in the expansion and improvement of the national science and technology system and in the dissemination of science in the country.

Unfortunately, this system is threatened in many ways. First, because of the constant attempt to withhold resources from the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (FNDCT), one of the main mechanisms for funding research and innovation in the country. This Tuesday (12), fortunately, the last attempt to drain its resources in Congress was defeated. But public universities, which are responsible for 90% of Brazilian research, have come under constant attack since 2019, with major cuts to their budgets.

Second, there was a certain amount of distrust of the research, bombarded by conspiracy theories or “alternative facts” buzzing on social networks. In addition, scientific evidence, especially in the field of health, has been refuted by unfounded beliefs, untested experiences and superstitions, in apparent scientific denial.

The second anniversary, celebrating the long life of the French philosopher Edgar Morin, gives us the opportunity to view education as individual and collective learning.

Moran continues to reflect on the transformations the world is going through and the importance of changing education to meet new and old challenges.

After his book The Relationship of Knowledge, in which, in his critique of French secondary education, he proposed an end to the fragmentation of disciplines, leading students to be thinkers capable of understanding complexity, he published on his centenary: Lessons from a Century of Life, where he explains How he himself, whether a member of the French resistance against Nazism or as a skilled thinker of his day, followed a path in which it was always learning, thinking and transformative work. and combined.

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