A educação e o professor polivalente: considerações a partir de Carl G. Jung e Hannah Arendt

Abstract

Education of children and juveniles is a requirement to the human world perpetuation as it is. Without it, societies would find a hard time getting to the next generation. In that scenario, the role of the teacher is central, being a representative of all adult inhabitants. This research draws a dialog between Carl G. Jung´s Analytical Psychology, especially his understanding of education and the Master-Apprentice archetype, and Hannah Arendt´s reflections over the school´s compromise due to the world. By dragging theses authors together, seeks to understand how elementary school teachers give meaning to their very own experience nowadays and how they relate to the educational sphere. A total of six semi-structured interviews were made to Elementary School female teachers, being one of them from the public system. At the end of these interviews they were asked to draw something related to their profession. All data was analyzed using symbolic interaction approach. We noticed that education, as with other typical human situations, is conducted by a symbolic field: the Master-Apprentice. Moreover, we found four distinct archetypal polarities: Wounded-Healer, Puer-Senex, Narcissus-Echo and Sisyphus-Divine child. However, the importance of these polarities differs significantly; for example, Sisyphus symbolism is not so decisive. Data suggests that elementary school teachers are having difficulties to develop the right persona on work, which might be related their lacking of responsibility with the world and with the future generation, as Arendt pointed out. That alone might have negative impact on modern schools challenges. In addition, our research also observed that some teachers are able to move along the different polarities of the symbolic field of teacher-students relations, clearly understanding of their role in educational system, they find in their career impactful points on their own individuation, and they might create a proper learning-environment to their students.