[ INTRODUCTION ]
Aperte o Play +
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"It is necessary to naturalize black bodies in society.
Children need to see themselves as possible people."
– Clarissa Brito
This time, we’ve stretched even further and brought to this equation an urgent and relevant theme for the school we dream to exist: one that makes use of Anti-Racist Pedagogy!
Why did we choose this focus for the new phase of Aperte o PLAY?
Every 23 minutes, a black youth dies in Brazil [Atlas da Violência 2020]. 91% of violent deaths of children aged 10 and above in the country are of black boys [Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública and Unicef]. Experts often use the word "epidemic" to refer to the extermination of young black Brazilians.
A British report with data collected by Anne Longfield, a children's rights activist, showed that in schools in the United Kingdom black children are "overpoliced" and tend to receive harsher punishments because they are adultized and seen as less innocent.
A study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry demonstrated that, in the United States, black children are up to 3.5 times more likely to receive detention or suspension in school than white children.
This is called RACISM.
If this racist logic and imagery are not undone, these children will continue to be at risk. And what can we do?
As educators, here we are. To boost the children's imagination with blackness. To fight for new narratives for the new generations. To present and provoke other perspectives. To revolutionize through affection and fight for anti-racist symbolism in childhood. We want to help see, and more than that, act. To do hands-on work. To value the collective, the search for solutions, the change of perspectives that the Maker Culture brings. To expand the imagination, to “blacken” the children's visual and narrative repertoires, which the combination of Elastic Readings with Anti-Racist Education presents.
Image: Istock - Credits: FernandoPodolski
We have assembled a multidisciplinary and diverse team to brainstorm paths and strategies to work, from early childhood, on the construction of a more inclusive, more affectionate classroom that recognizes the black body as one belonging to spaces of knowledge, a classroom that contributes to building the self-esteem of black children, values culture, and puts into practice Law 10.639/2003, which makes it mandatory to teach Afro-Brazilian history and culture. A law which has turned twenty in 2023 and still faces many challenges to be properly implemented, validated, and valued in Brazilian schools. We will need everyone for this challenge!
Image: Istock - Credits: Jacob Wackerhausen
We're going to need everyone for this challenge!
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