O pensamento progressista na revista Movimento da União Nacional dos Estudantes (1962-1963)

Abstract

This thesis presents a historical study of Brazilian education by student press and aims to analyze the progressive thinking of the National Union of Students (UNE, in the Portuguese acronym) and its dissemination by the Movimento magazine - 1962 and 1963 editions. Based on the principles of dialectical, historical materialism, the research methodological procedures of a document and bibliographical nature, included the elaboration of the state of the art, a literature review, the mapping of the Movimento magazine, the selection of content, as well as the critical analysis of relevant articles for the development of the thesis and, the screening of secondary sources to support the theoretical framework. The study started from the following research questions: What are the material conditions that produced the progressive ideas and their contradictions? How and why the progressive thinking was adopted by the UNE in the early 1960s? Which liberal principles were present in the Movimento student magazine? The specific aims were: to analyze the performance of UNE as a progressive sector in the nationalist and developmental campaigns that marked different democratic governments from 1945 to 1964. In addition, the Movimento magazine was characterized in the context of its 11 publications in 1962 and 1963, aiming to identify the theoretical support of progressive thinking of the university entity in its pages and its relation with the liberal principles of John Locke and Adam Smith. The study also examined how UNE, in its Movimento magazine, treated Brazilian education. The study sees specifically what the understanding of the university entity about illiteracy and the relation between this form of conscience and the historical conditions of Brazil in that period were. In addition to the educational issue, the investigation verified the conception UNE had about Brazilian higher education and its project of university reform. While examining these educational issues, the study tried to identify the contradictions of the progressive thinking held by the student entity from the materiality of university students. Finally, the conception of national liberation based on the criticism to imperialism and to large states were analyzed as they have been the two most common themes in the Movimento magazine, as well as the characteristics of the Brazilian revolution. This investigation tried to disclose the influence of liberal ideology in UNE progressive thinking and contrast the progressive ideas with Marxist assumptions. The study allowed the defense of the thesis that progressive thinking, published in the Movimento magazine from UNE, had liberal principles and was the result of historical contradictions inherent to the capitalist form of production in Brazil in the early 1960´s.