FLORESTAN FERNANDES AND THE UNIVERSITY LIFE: REFLEXIONS ON THE TEACHING WORK

Abstract

The object of this article is to present some contributions from the educational
production of Florestan Fernandes using his writings on the university and some activities
developed in his teaching work, in the years 1941 to 1969, at the University of São Paulo.
The sources used were reports elaborated to the board of the faculty, articles published in
the newspapers, publications on the dilemmas of the tertiary teaching and others
documents. The rereading of classical authors, like Florestan Fernandes, is an important
basis for everyone who desire to understand the possibilities and the limits of the university
inside the dependent capitalism, and also offers a theoretical arsenal to think about the
nowadays requirements of productivity of teaching work as the only way to get a good
educational quality. Florestan indicates some alternatives to think the social role of the
university based on the changes of the sociology, the research conception and the collective
work. The author analyses the utilization of the university as a space for the defiance of the
order making critics of the social dilemmas imposed by the capitalist mode of production.