Does Brazil support democracy?

Does Brazil support democracy?

People in Brazil want democracy but leaders like Bolsonaro are authoritarian. Leonardo Sakamoto writes about bringing new energy to politics, starting with history education.

Datafolha is our most reputable polling firm. A survey by Datafolha shows most Brazilians (75 per cent) support democracy. It shows 7 per cent prefer a dictatorship. Another survey shows that 7 per cent believe the Earth is flat.

I’m not saying all Brazilians wanting dictatorship believe the Earth is flat, but it shows that good education is very important.

An education in basic science will reduce the number of people who believe the world is flat like a pizza. Datafolha’s survey showed that 10 per cent of the people with only elementary school education believed the Earth is flat, and 6 per cent with high school education, and 3 per cent with a university education.

History education is the same. It can reduce – but not stop – the number of people who love authoritarian governments without knowing their true nature and effects.

We need to look again at the big majority of Brazilians in support of democracy. Here in Brazil some support authoritarians and believe they are democrats. For example, in August the Metropolis news website showed conversations from a WhatsApp group of wealthy entrepreneurs praising the Jair Bolsonaro administration. Some even defended a coup d’état. Interestingly, they accused the opposition of authoritarianism, simply for opposing Bolsonaro’s undemocratic acts.

It seems we have spent so much time making sure young people memorize dates of battles and names of rivers that we have lost the teaching of critical thinking. Some people wish to rewrite Brazil’s past with their own opinions and they are also against teaching history. They want schools to be places of repetition, not debate and discussion.

We need to protect history teaching in schools against people and movements who want us to know only the date when they abolished slavery in Brazil, But they don’t want to debate why the Act of 13 May 1888 did not guarantee freedom and autonomy to Afro-American people in Brazil.

We need to protect history teaching in schools against people who say that children must learn that World War Two began when Germany invaded Poland, but they complain if teachers criticize what the Nazis taught.

We need to teach the history of the military dictatorship in Brazil from 1964 to 1985 so that our young people never forget that the freedom they enjoy today did not fall from the sky. It cost the blood and lives of far too many people.

In May 1933, mountains of books appeared in town squares throughout Germany. The Nazi regime wanted to clean up all the books that were different from their ideas. So, hundreds of thousands of books burned to ashes. They persecuted Einstein, Mann, Freud, and others for daring to think differently from the majority.

Today, bonfires and squares are often virtual. But they burn all the same.

NOW TRY THE ORIGINAL:

https://newint.org/features/2022/10/25/view-brazil-democracy

(This article is in easier English so it is possible that we changed the words, the text structure, and the quotes.)