Just imagine the mess: a busload of teenagers storming in on the literature department of a public University, happy, full of adrenaline, ready to invade the place...
The bus trip from Macae to Rio went surprisingly smoothly - the kids were anxious, with this mixture of anticipation and anxiety actors know well: stagefright. But then, once in the hallway of the 'Faculdade de Letras' they forgot all about knots in the belly and simply took over the place. The 40 students from the Colegio dos Pescadores were there, at UFRJ, to present their work, our work, and they didn't give anyone the chance to ignore them. There were dance shows, plays, panels, films, paintings - all the result of the work done in the school over the past years.
The kids probably didn't fully grasp the meaning of their presence there, for us, for the project, for the University. Our work is part of a social project ran by UFRJ, as part of their 'extension' programme. Our work is an attempt by the University, still considered a motor of social change in Brazil, to bring directly to the community the work of its experts. To share the knowledge it produces. To reduce the abyssal inequalities that exist in this country. Rare are the opportunities for people from the favela educated in government schools to enter a public University. They are kept out of it - what a contradiction! - by an appalling public education system and an unfair selection process, which favours rich kids educated in private schools. But now our kids got in there once, and may this moment motivate them to want to come back in a couple of years. Many of them are good and clever enough - they have all the genetic material for it, and if anything impedes them, then it is nurture, their environment, not nature that is to blame.
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