SINDICALISMO DE PROFESSORES E PRODUÇÃO ACADÊMICA: REFLEXÕES TEÓRICAS E SENSO COMUM SINDICAL

In a context of marked precariousness in teaching work, which, although it constitutes a structurally striking feature of the educational field in Brazil as a nation occupying the periphery of the global capitalist system, is intensified under the historical context of the hegemony of neoliberal policies, the unionism of public basic education teachers resists, representing one of the few professional categories that, through their unions, still maintain some power of mobilization after the neoliberal counteroffensive that undermined the union bases of large contingents of Brazilian workers. However, this same struggle of teachers' unions, although it has, in a certain way, resisted the "neoliberal avalanche", has not escaped this historical process unscathed, encountering, to this day, great difficulties in its struggles and capacity for mobilization. It is in the midst of this historical framework briefly described that the research entitled "Teacher, unionist, academic: for a critique of the critique of teaching unionism" takes place. Based on the theoretical framework developed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, the aforementioned research has as its object the group of union activists and former union activists in the teaching profession who will later dedicate themselves to studies and research on the same teaching unionism, in postgraduate programs and their master's and doctoral courses. Contrary to what may appear at first glance, the aforementioned research, through bibliographic and documentary research, reveals to us, at first, that the large number of unionists and former unionists studying and researching the subject of teaching unionism would not guarantee, a priori, the existence of a “militant production”, in the sense of the constitution of a critical mass of studies and research closely linked to the collective struggles of the teaching profession and, therefore, capable of guiding such struggles. These, however, continue to be carried out in a somewhat “intuitive” manner, guided by practical political-union knowledge, devoid of an important process of study and critical reflection capable of leading to a renewal of union practices that could greatly provide the collective action of teachers with new instruments capable of reviving the teaching movement and, thus, strengthening it in its struggles against neoliberal policies.