Decolonial Education in Brazil - Alfabetization is much more than teaching how to read – A decolonial reading of the article “A new public literacy policy is urgent”
Decolonial Education in Brazil - Alfabetization is much more than teaching how to read – A decolonial reading of the article “A new public literacy policy is urgent”
The article by linguist Leonor Scliar-Cabral is an essential milestone in defending a literacy process grounded in scientific evidence. However, for this public policy to be truly transformative, it must recognize the neurocognitive, affective, territorial, and intergenerational diversity of Brazilian childhoods.
The Neuroscience We Need: Plural, Relational, and Situated
The criticism of teaching myths — like starting with writing one's name or naming letters — is valid. Yet, a decolonial neuroscience goes beyond phonology and synaptic plasticity. It acknowledges that:
The brain develops through the body, relationships, and the rhythms of territory.
Language emerges from lived experience, daily musicality, affection, and belonging.
Literacy must respect the timing of the body, not the pacing of the market.
Intergenerational Learning: A Pedagogy of Belonging
In Amerindian traditions, learning happens with the joint participation of different ages — young children learn from the older ones, and the elders revive their knowledge through teaching the younger.
This pedagogy:
Creates belonging among siblings and community members.
Stimulates language development through relational reference, not just abstraction.
Establishes knowledge as a continuous thread of shared care and attention.
With belonging, the brain organizes its references more effectively. With affective references, reading and writing gain real meaning.
Literacy is not just Mind: It’s Body, Affection, Aesthetics, and Politics
Scliar-Cabral rightly points out that learners are not being educated as a whole. We agree — but go further: the “whole” is not a collection of cognitive areas, but a living ecosystem where:
Affects and sensory experience shape attention and the desire to learn.
Belonging is not a technique — it is a condition for the mind to open up to language.
Aesthetics and storytelling are not decorative — they are the brain’s natural way of making meaning.
The Scliar Method is an Advancement — But It Must Dialogue with Ancestral Knowledge
The proposed teacher training, structured materials, and follow-up are concrete steps. But to truly overcome Brazil’s structural illiteracy, we must:
Include Indigenous, African, and popular knowledge as legitimate forms of language.
Recognize that Western alphabetization is a recent technology — not the only one.
Teach reading without erasing the children's bodily, sensorial, and communal narratives.
Practical Paths to Literacy Based on Decolonial Neuroscience
Start from the body and rhythm: music, breathing, dance, fine motor coordination.
Create affective environments with psychological safety and a sense of belonging.
Use territorial metaphors, local stories, myths, and culturally familiar symbols.
Value error and silence as part of the process of reading oneself and the world.
Train teachers to be listeners, not just transmitters.
Restore the value of intergenerational relationships as a natural learning structure.
Literacy as Living Memory of the Body-Territory
Just as DNA expresses itself when it finds the right environmental conditions, language flourishes where there is connection, rhythm, and relational presence.
We don’t teach literacy merely to decode signs —
We teach literacy to integrate the child into the sensorial and symbolic continuity of shared life.
