O gesto docente: um convite à atenção no tempo-presença

Abstract

This thesis brings, from a philosophical point of view, a bibliographical proposal to discuss the conditions and challenges common to teaching. The research defends from the relationship between attitude and activity as a gesture, also as a structuring issue of the teaching gesture. The maintenance of school time and its structure – scholé. To this end, it develops the hypothesis that the core of teaching is to ensure conditions for studying and it analyses the concept of attention as the main critical-purposeful investment of the teaching gesture. Along with the philosophy of Simone Weil, it seeks to approximate the relationship between attention and beauty while it connects with the human world and the building up of habits of study attention at school. While it builds the proposal, the research brings the example of the study of mathematics from the Weilian perspective regarding to the form of attention as a medium between being and the world. Aiming to affirm the temporality of the school with the form of study attention, as opposed to the instrumental appropriation of attention, in the utilitarian domain of knowledge, the research discusses time-presence as a counterpoint to machine-time. When it considers time-presence as essential to the teaching gesture, it discusses pedagogical bets consistent with the relationship between attention and the human world and, to that end, it lists elements of literary creation that can bequeath to the class-form, the critical and creative composition of expression. From the opposition between the machine-time and the teaching gesture, it highlights elements that reveal the challenges common to the teaching profession and, with a spotlight on the Brazilian context, it argues how the job insecurity impacts the relationship between the laborer and professional success. From the relationship between theory and reality, activity and attitude, the thesis seeks to pinch, from the teaching narratives – in class reports and testimonials from former students – the expression of the critical and creative gesture engaged in sustaining and renewing human culture. From the experience of Professor Marilena Chaui and Professor Cláudio Ulpiano, the research analyses the teaching gesture as an act of care, attention, sharing time-presence and invitation to the world. It is hoped, from this study, the fulfillment of the idea of teaching as a given gesture between committed action and the attitude of calling attention, with a view to supporting plurality.