Oh, blessed is he who sows books, who sows books prodigiously!

Literacy, pandemic and Brazilian social exclusion

Abstract

The COVID 19, pandemic (2020) required facing unusual situations, such as the suspension of face-to-face classes in Brazilian schools. The most vulnerable students were the most affected, as they do not have access to the internet and were left without school activities. This social exclusion deepens the historical inequalities in our country. The objective of this article is to problematize social exclusion, through the historical view on literacy, following the installation of the Republican School system and its extensions in the current School, with its practices of teaching writing and reading. Our approach adopts the Foucaultian archeogenealogical perspective, that is, the investigation is carried out through the analysis of discourses from the historical-critical perspective of the relations between knowledge, powers and processes of subjectification. The discussion on literacy at the Republican School shows us that practices are guided by a strong prideful nationalism, the effect of which is to hide contradictions and segregations in order to maintain unequal order. The prolongation of this segregation at the present time, evidenced by the analysis of the Conta pra mim program (MEC, 2019), occurs in the absence of affirmative policies and deepens the chasm between those who have access to digital literacy and others who are excluded from this social achievement.