The ethical responsibility of answering what purpose school serves

Abstract

We were urged to this discussion by the “persecution” suffered by the school during the COVID-19 pandemic, a persecution to which it is our ethical-political duty to respond. This is an essay that intends to problematize the serving of the school - which seems to confer its meanings - to defend that such meanings only appear in the relationship with the other that defines them and that also distort our own subjectivation. The school, as a name, only exists because it integrates the whole lived experience with the world and with ourselves and, therefore, cannot be defined a priori or by a serving. In the construction of this text, we were haunted by conversations triggered by the interpellation “What purpose does school serve?” with teachers and administrative agents of the municipal education network in the city of Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. From a theoretical point of view, we have a dialogue mainly with Judith Butler, Janet Miller and Gert Biesta to defend that a responsible or responsive pedagogical theory needs to make any ideal of school come accompanied by its deconstruction.