Luiz Síveres

Youth: Between the Price of Consumption and the Value of Commitment

The main purpose of this chapter is to suggest more ethical ways of living our personal and social lives. This, in turn, would make it possible for our society – especially the youth – to change its focus from the price of consumption to the value of commitment. The authors believe that individual and collective attempts to salvage certain values like authenticity, closeness, and solidarity could contribute to creating a more socio-ecologically just society that is based on principles of ethics and responsibility.

Participative Management and Socio-Environmental Sustainability: a Study of Public Schools of Sobral, CE, Brazil

In this study we analyze indicators of the influence of participative management on the development of school projects envisaged by the Direct Funding in the School Program – Sustainable Schools (Programa Dinheiro Direto na Escola – PDDE – Escolas Sustentaveis), which aimed to promote socio-environmental education. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews with principals, teachers, coordinators, and students in four schools included in the program. Based on a group of 15 participants, results confirm the premise that participative management, with the addition of institutional financial support for school projects, enriched both the school and social community regarding issues of conservation and preservation of the environment for the purpose of enabling better quality of life for present and future generations. Broad participation and discussion were the foundation for identification of the meanings/sense (import) the participants attach to their actions and achievements in the schools. This culminated in creating what we here designate as indicators of socio-environmental sustainability in schools with participative management.

Mística do educador no exercício da docência

O inicio do seculo atual esta sendo caracterizado pela continuidade de muitas conquistas, mas tambem por uma serie de desafios, dentre os quais o da propria condicao humana, que continua sendo afetada, principalmente na sua subjetividade e intersubjetividade. Esta realidade, juntamente com tantas outras e, fundamentalmente, resquicio de uma tensao entre o local e global, entre o pessoal e social, ou entre o material e espiritual, porem tais tendencias se conectam e se entrecruzam constantemente, comprometendo, de uma forma ou outra, todos os ambientes institucionais e impactando todos os fenomenos humanos. Neste cenario encontra-se, tambem, o sistema educativo e o sujeito educador, que, para exercer a sua missao educadora, necessitaria, dentre outras exigencias, de uma mistica. Neste sentido esta se propondo uma mistica vinculada a metafora da “taca de vinho”, que se assemelha mais a estrutura, a forma e a organizacao da escola, para entao reconhecer a relevância do “sabor do vinho”, identificado com a mistica educativa como uma disposicao de interioridade, uma dinâmica de conectividade e uma experiencia de transcendencia. Neste contexto e recomendado destacar, tambem, uma mistica do educador por meio de uma energia biologica, um movimento dialogico e uma luz analogica.The beginning of this century has been characterized by the continuity of many achievements but also by a series of challenges, including the human condition itself, which continues to be affected, especially in its subjectivity and inter-subjectivity. This reality, along with so many others, is fundamentally a remnant of a tension between local and global, between personal and social, or between material and spiritual. However, such tendencies are constantly linked and cross over one another, somehow compromising all institutional environments and impinging upon all human phenomena. The educational system and educators lie within this scenario, and the exercise of their educational mission would require, among other things, a mystique. The proposal of a mystique is hereby linked to the metaphor of a “wine glass”, with a greater similarity to the structure, form, and organization of the school, so as to then recognize the relevance of the “flavor of the wine”, which is identified with the educational mystique as stemming from inner experience, a dynamic of connectedness, and an experience of transcendence. In this context, a mystique of the educator should also be highlighted by means of a biological energy, a dialogical movement, and an analogical light.