Fernanda Baukat, José Aguiar and Claudia Regina B. Moreira, many months ago, at the end of the first meeting about this project.
Hello! This is the first post of this blog. I intend to tell a little bit of the creation process of the project Brazil’s Childhood. I believe it is a little complicated for me to tell exactly when this idea was born. However, my interest for childhood was certainly born together with my first son. Ever since, images, flavours, scents, it is, sensations from my own childhood, have been vivid in my mind. To watch a child grow is to open a gate to an inner child that had been asleep. To see myself in the small things that your son does is to resuscitate neurons that you didn’t even know existed. This is the ludic and delicious part of the thing.
The other side of the coin is to have to deal with social issues. From the family expectations to sexist issues such as wearing blue or pink. Then there comes the worry with the exposition to child publicity or the search for a school, which has the proposal of inclusive learning. Believe me, it’s not easy to find one that doesn’t alienate or inserts my child into the mass. Yet, the school needs to be in a place near our home and the fees must fit our budget.
I believe in the importance of the ludic, that being a child is to have time to play. But many parents demand from educators, even in a kindergarten, that their kids are prepared to face a competitive world. For them, the earlier you teach literacy to a child, the better. The better they dance the choreography and sing the stereotyped song, the more satisfied they get. When I saw myself with insights so different from as to what childhood is, I slowly started to question myself about how we got to this current state.
In the past few years, be it due to the political and economical scenario, the World Cup or the Olympics, Brazil has become an occurring topic for discussion worldwide. Football and Carnival, of course, have been on the spotlight of the media. Not to mention Protests and corruption. These are the common places when the topic is Brazil. I believe that, over here, we are living a moment of deconstruction, to reflect so that, who knows, we create a better country for our children. Therefore there is so much tension, ideology conflict, and conservative views clashing against the new ones. We’re crossing a period of transition that may take us to new paths or bring back old ghosts. These are things that we had forgotten, that we deemed out-dated, but that knock ever so strongly on our doors. It’s time for us to rediscover ourselves.
There is even curiosity, by those who live abroad, to learn more about the Brazil of today. There is curiosity over there, but there is the need over here, I believe. Since we are not very used to treating our memory very well, let alone revisiting our history so we can understand who we really are. This project was born from a long elaboration of questions and investigation on the different versions of what it is to be a child. Come and follow me in this journey through time. Welcome on board!
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