“Você volta amanhã e depois para sempre?”: o combate à educação colonialista às voltas com uma filosofia de pião

Abstract

Like the turns of a spinninig top, which are also the turns of this world, a playful education tensioned by reality is possible and necessary. This research has as it’s object te act of playing within a critical analysis of the process of colonialism in Brazil. Together with children from the village of São Roque, rural region of Feira de Santana - Bahia, as research subjects, te act of playing as an object was also made as a methodological and procedural choice. Considering playing a spirit that permeates all instances of existence, here the loops are related to education, developing a conceptual elaboration on playing specifically tensioned by material and symbolic consequences of the colonial legacy: whiteness and the maintenance of power in their hands. Through studies of whiteness, it’s dominating impetus is identified as a fundamental trait, which steals the spirit, subjugates it, and creates a social structure separated from a playful way of existing. It also does the same with the body in the learning processes. That is why the research revolves around the structure of rationality in Brazilian education and its still deeply colonial and colonizing format imposed on childhood. In contrast, the key concept in the work is: alacrity, because it dialogues with the concepts of drift, time, and body for a cosmoperceptive and investigative construction: a Philosophy of Spinninig Top. The main objective of the investigation is to defend playing as a cultural system capable of tracing paths to combat an education that still proposes to be colonizing. To do so, specifically traces of colonialism and whiteness are pointed out that playing, as an ontology, tensions and undermines. The methodology on the spinning top axis is a combative epistemological exercise that crossed studies on colonialism, whiteness, educational policies in Brazil and playful encounters with the children of São Roque. The research questions: what is the effect, for education, of this connection of playing from a critical perspective on the colonial legacy? The research provokes the blaming of whiteness for the distortion of playing as a possible axis of social regency and, on the other hand, contributes with foundations for facing oppressive realities, through education. Since playing itself has an attitudinal muscle, these encounters with the children of São Roque inspired the construction of a methodology that promotes the exercise of researching while playing, through seven fundamental moments of spinning tops as methodological paths: the wooden trunk in the lathe; the spinneret that surrounds the toy; the throw; the dance; sleep; the staggering and falling of the spinning top. As a procedure, photography, audio visuals and the logbook are great allies for capturing both the poetics of the encounters with the children and the recording of important moments of reflection. Through the teachings of children, the masters on playing, the act of playing here resists bravely, since these playful routes contest the formation of Brazilian educational thought and present a confrontation with Western rationality as an axis of knowledge.