WE MUST TALK ABOUT GENDER: FOR A DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION

Moralizing speeches have been used by a conservative agenda, in contemporary Brazil, as a form of opening doors for political conservatism to stop any possibility for the social and democratic advances that were built in the past fifteen years. Such a scenario causes perplexity and is considered seriously problematic for democracy. Education professionals have been accused of promoting the so called 'gender ideology`, while politics have been excluding topics concerning gender from their syllabus, contradicting recommendations from official documents as Plano Nacional de Educacao, Diretrizes Curriculares and Parametros Curriculares Nacionais. On the other hand, groups formed with representatives coming from different social sectors, and - especially - teachers, basic education students and universities, have been acting and reacting in order to question such conceptions and secure the respect and valuing of diversity, in its widest meaning, reinforcing the idea of school as a place for a legit construction of new generations through the use of democratic practices. We defend that topics on gender and sexuality are already part of students' routine in formal school, what is confirmed based on two initiatives developed in 2017, that we present: Grupo PET Conexoes de Saberes/Interdisciplinar and the I Coloquio sobre Genero e Educacao. In times of striking against democracy, it is urgent to defend an equal and democratic schooling, assuming the diverse nature in schools and public universities.