History of Education and Political HistoryThe 24th Issue of the Brazilian Journal of History of Education (RBHE), published throughout 2024, is amid a year in which events, memories, and stories of different natures, temporalities, and scales have repercussions, both in the academic sphere and in the political and social spheres. Therefore, in the first part of this editorial, we analyze issues associated with the sub-area of knowledge History of Education, the large area of knowledge Education, and the Political History of Brazil. In the second and final part, we analyze articles that compose this issue, as well as some editorial strategies that guided the process of receiving, evaluating, and publishing the manuscripts submitted throughout this year.
In the specific context of the History of Education, this is a very special moment, since, between August 14 and 17, 2024, in the city of Natal, the collective of historians of education once again shared, in person, the experience of the Brazilian Congresses of History of Education (CBHE), organized by the Brazilian Society of History of Education (SBHE). The XII CBHE, with the theme E-history of education: collections, sources and territories, following the tradition initiated in the I CBHE (Rio de Janeiro, 2000), with a large presence of recognized and consolidated researchers, side by side with researchers in training. At this event, different generations discussed the historian's craft, the historiographical operation and its relations with the movements of constructing digital collections and archives.
In addition to the opportunity for debate and academic exchange, the XII CBHE provided a chance to reunite people who were mostly physically separated due to the pandemic crisis that began in 2020. There is no doubt that the paths taken by RBHE are closely and inseparably linked to the trajectory of SBHE, the entity that maintains the journal, as well as its national congresses. CBHEs represent spaces in which the community can share research that, to some extent, transforms into publications in RBHE, in other journals in the field, as well as in the academic book publishing market. The existence of interdependence between SBHE, RBHE and the CBHEs is notorious, forming a physical and symbolic space for the construction of an identity, based on principles of collaboration, interpretative disputes, circulation and publication of knowledge and, consequently, mutual improvement.
However, despite the centrality occupied by the SBHE initiatives and instruments, the research in History of Education produced in Brazil is made up of a broader set of institutions and actions, as it also articulates other research and debate forums, such as ANPED's GT2, the various Research Groups, the set of specialized journals and the Postgraduate Programs. This synergy among researchers, in various institutional spaces, generates an accumulation of qualified knowledge and, consequently, international recognition. Among the evidence of this visibility beyond national borders, we highlight, between August 18 and 21, the 45th ISCHE Conference, with the theme Decoloniality and diversity in the History of Education1. This is the second meeting held in Brazil by the most important international entity of researchers in the History of Education. The 25th ISCHE conference took place in São Paulo in 2003, and now the event has returned to the country (Natal-RN), and provides reflection on the History of Education, based on the categories of decoloniality and diversity.
In this scenario of internationalization, the understanding of interconnected, multilateral or transnational histories assumes the processes of research problematization, so that the proximity and harmony of the two events, XII CBHE and 45th ISCHE, favored these approaches, nuanced by the sharing of collections, the formation of multinational research teams, publications co-authored by Brazilian and foreign researchers, as well as the development of interpretative perspectives with approaches of different scales and theoretical perspectives.
In 2024, the Brazilian Education Association (ABE) will celebrate its centenary in the broad area of knowledge related to education. Founded in 1924, it is considered the first civil society organization with national reach to focus its efforts on formulating and organizing the debate on educational problems and projects. Formed by an active and recognized intellectual group at the time, the organization held national events from 1927 onwards, the so-called National Education Conferences (CNEs), which sought to nationalize and unify the proposals formulated by the organization, seeking, through various strategies (in public management, in the legislature, in the mainstream press, in specialized publishing, in school reforms, among other means), to make the issue of education for the Brazilian people a central issue in the public debate of the first half of the 20th century.
In addition to the gathering of teachers, specialists and those interested in the topic of education, the ABE events represented important moments in the history of Brazilian politics and education, since the CNEs were marked by dialogues, rapprochements and conflicts between the association's members and the State. On the part of the political power, there was no shortage of requirements for the ABE to intervene in the public scene, as seen on the occasion of the IV CNE, in 1931, when Getúlio Vargas and Francisco Campos, President of the Republic and Minister of Education, respectively, in their speeches at the opening of the event, asked the speakers to provide the provisional government with the “'happy formula', the 'concept of education' of the new educational policy” (Carvalho, 1998, p. 380).
With all due respect, entities such as ANPED and SBHE are, to a large extent, heirs of this movement that aimed and still aims to give visibility to the problems of national education, organizing and mobilizing various groups committed to the problem of education and school training, at different levels and modalities. This movement, led by ABE and later taken on by other entities representing the education community, has been fighting for changes that meet the interests of the populations that depend on the improvement of public schools, in order to reach higher levels of civility and citizenship. In this sense, there have been numerous works published in the last 30 years, from the historical perspective or from other epistemologies present in the academic field of education, which have directly or indirectly problematized the experience of the centennial ABE (1924-2024).
The year 2024 also refers, in the poet's words, to the “unhappy page of our history (...) A faded passage in the memory of our new generations” (Buarque, 1984)2. The advent of the civil-military dictatorship in Brazil, in March 1964, completed 60 years. The 21 years of dictatorship left deep marks on Brazilian society, so that the memory and history of that period continue to be active, including in recent times, which generated revisionist interpretations that, with less or no historiographical rigor, aim to praise the experience of authoritarianism, regimes of exception, torture, exile and death of the regime's opponents. The Brazilian civil-military dictatorship was part of a process that involved different countries in South America. Thus, the regimes of exception, especially in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, had points in common, but also tragic particularities.
In the academic historiography of education in Brazil, the gestures of interpretation are unequivocal in the sense of representing this period as a disastrous moment in history, which affected the educational field in a particular way. In the Brazilian case, the repression of the student movement, the compulsory retirement of teachers, the lack of academic freedom and the imposition of a set of educational reforms at all levels and modalities were some of the marks of this regime of “dark transactions”, which still reverberate in Brazilian society.
In other words, the problems and consequences left by the dictatorship's policies are still present and, therefore, the battles surrounding the interpretation, writing and teaching of history do not cease. Therefore, throughout 2024, the RBHE promoted a public call for a Thematic Dossier, entitled: Education in the Times of the Dictatorship. This undertaking aims to “deepen knowledge on the subject and encourage debate on the implications of the dictatorship for Brazilian education” (Chaloba et al., 2024).
This editorial project has received a significant number of contributions and is currently evaluating the submitted manuscripts, with publication scheduled for early 2025. We understand that this dossier represents, among RBHE's initiatives, a contribution to keep the agenda of educational experiences in a public debate, which represents both the impositions of the State and its instruments of repression and the resistance of social actors in relation to authoritarian norms, practices and ways of thinking and acting.
Regarding the balance of the editorial work carried out during 2024, we initially highlight the publication of the dossier History of Education and the teaching of Social Sciences. This dossier brings together six articles by Brazilian and foreign researchers, “which seek to offer a comprehensive and diversified approach to the topic, considering the plurality of sources, analyses and the institutional diversity of the authors. We also seek to situate the readers of the aforementioned dossier within the set of debates on the History of the teaching of Social Sciences in Brazil” (Oliveira et al., 2024, p. 1). As the organizers highlighted, the collected texts created a point of intersection among Sociology, History and the History of Education, providing new elements for us to think about the relationships amidst Sociology and its forms, materials and means of teaching.
Among the documents published by RBHE throughout 2024, three reviews are worth mentioning. This type of publication is a tradition among academic journals and serves the purpose of reporting and analyzing recently released books that address themes and problems in the History of Education. In the ongoing demand section, we published 39 articles, which express unpublished research results and which, added to the texts in the dossier, totalize 45 articles, written by 84 authors. Of these authors, 74 (87%) are based in Brazilian research institutions and 11 (13%) in foreign institutions.
Among the authors based in foreign research institutions, we identified the following countries: Portugal, Argentina, Spain, France and Italy. The concentration in these countries indicates that language barriers are still obstacles to overcome. Therefore, as a strategy to attract English-speaking authors and readers, we translated 15 articles into English. In addition to these translations, five (5) manuscripts were submitted directly by the authors in the other languages accepted by the RBHE (Spanish, English and French), totaling 44% of texts published in foreign languages, with a strong emphasis on English.
In the national scenario, the geographic distribution of the authors of the 45 articles shows that the Southeast is the region with the greatest presence, reflecting the historical concentration of institutions and postgraduate programs in the territory. However, it is worth highlighting the growth in publications by authors based in the Northeast region, totaling 20%, equaling the number of publications by researchers based in institutions in the South region, which, historically, has always had an important presence in the journal, as shown in Figure 1, prepared from data collected in the RBHE editorial management system, OJS. What is noteworthy in these numbers is the absence of authors linked to institutions in the Central-West, especially given the tradition of the states in this region in the field of History of Education in Brazil.
These numbers suggest the need to continue to publicize and encourage submissions from other regions in order to balance the distribution of authorship and, thus, maintain an effective nationalization of the RBHE, in order to welcome and better understand the themes, styles and ways of writing the history of education in the different regions of the country. In addition to the inequalities in the distribution of the institutional origin of regional authorship, there are asymmetries within each region, since authors based in research institutions in 14 of the 27 federative entities were identified, as shown in Figure 2, prepared in the same way as the previous one. The absence, for example, of authors linked to institutions in Santa Catarina, Paraíba and Amapá in the South, Northeast and North regions, respectively, can be explained by the short duration of the series analyzed (12 months). However, it is necessary to pay attention to the frequencies in series with more representative temporalities to mobilize, if necessary, strategies to induce submissions.
Regarding the evaluation of submitted manuscripts, we would like to highlight an important number. Approximately 14% of the ad hoc reviewers involved in the blind peer review process are based in foreign research institutions. The internationalization process - previously restricted to the translation of articles, indexing in international databases, the composition of the Editorial Board and Committee, and the publication of foreign authors - now extends to the evaluation of manuscripts and the journal. Among the editorial guidelines aimed at internationalization, the evaluation of manuscripts is perhaps one of the most difficult actions to implement, since it involves building pathways that are largely hindered by language barriers and difficulties in dialogue between different academic cultures.
In this review of the journal's experience, we would also like to emphasize that RBHE has achieved standards that we consider to be excellent in terms of time spent between submission, evaluation and publication of texts. Three weeks is the average time spent between submission of the manuscript on RBHE's OJS platform and the beginning of the peer review process. 20 weeks is the average time between submission and completion of the evaluation process by the responsible editor, while 31 weeks, approximately 7 months, is the average time required between submission and publication of the text, including the entire process of review, standardization, layout and conversion of texts to XML format.
The RBHE reception, evaluation and publication routines, as well as the average time spent on these processes, meet the main demands of the author. In other words: to have their work evaluated impartially and rigorously and, if approved, to see it published quickly. In relation to the reader, the benefit is seen, above all, in the speed of research publication results, allowing access to consistent and peer-reviewed knowledge. This permanent updating of the state of the art in the field is one of the missions of academic journals, which directly impacts the production of new research, teaching, circulation and democratization of knowledge.
Finally, we would like to note that this issue 24th also represents the conclusion of Professor José Gonçalves Gondra's term as an Associate Editor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) on the Editorial Board. The professor began working at RBHE in September 2019 as Associate Editor, becoming Editor-in-Chief in July 2022. He spent almost five years improving the journal, establishing a sober, democratic and, above all, rigorous leadership style in dealing with issues related to RBHE. Therefore, the remaining editorial team would like to express their immense gratitude to the professor for his time with us and wish him success in his new projects. In August 2024, we would also like to mention the joining of Professor Wagner Rodrigues Valente, from the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), as Associate Editor to the Editorial Board.
With this, we conclude this editorial by inviting readers to continue accessing the works published in RBHE, reinforcing the request to promote the journal among peers and to submit new articles.
References
- Buarque, C. (1984). Vai passar [Música]. Chico Buarque. Barclay; Polygram; Philips.
- Carvalho, M. M. C. de. (1998). Molde Nacional e Fôrma Cívica: higiene, moral e trabalho no projeto da Associação Brasileira de Educação (1924-1931). EDUSF.
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Chaloba, R. F.de S; Sá, E. F.; Galak, E. L. (2024, 23 mar.) Chamada de submissões de artigos para o Dossiê “A Educação nos Tempos da Ditadura”. Revista Brasileira de História da Educação [Website]. https://periodicos.uem.br/ojs/index.php/rbhe/announcement/view/494.
» https://periodicos.uem.br/ojs/index.php/rbhe/announcement/view/494. -
Memorial da Democracia. (2017). Vai passar a noite da ditadura militar: Samba de Chico celebra a virada da 'página infeliz da nossa história’. https://memorialdademocracia.com.br/card/vai-passar-a-noite-da-ditadura-militar
» https://memorialdademocracia.com.br/card/vai-passar-a-noite-da-ditadura-militar -
Oliveira, A., Bodart, C. das N., & Campos, R. D. de. (2024). História do ensino das Ciências Sociais. Revista Brasileira de História da Educação, 24(1), e333. https://doi.org/10.4025/rbhe.v24.2024.e333
» https://doi.org/10.4025/rbhe.v24.2024.e333
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Funding:
RBHE has financial support from the Brazilian Society of History of Education (SBHE) and the Editorial Program (Call No. 12/2022) of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).
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How to cite this editorial:
Vieira, C. E. et al. (2024). History of Education and Political History. Revista Brasileira de História da Educação, 24. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4025/rbhe.v24.2024.e345
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1
For more information about the event, please visit the following link: https://ische45.com/
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2
The song began to be composed in early 1984, during the campaign for direct elections, and ended up becoming the musical symbol of the so-called New Republic. In the rhythm of a samba-enredo, the lyrics are a tasty settling of scores by the composer with the regime that persecuted, arrested, exiled and censored him, but could not silence his talent nor his identification with the public and with the fight for democracy (Memorial da Ditadura, 2017).
Source: organized by the authors.
Source: organized by the authors.