Maurício Tragtenberg – Militancy and libertarian pedagogy

Abstract

In this book, Antonio Ozaí da Silva analyzes the thought and praxis of Maurício Tragtenberg, social thinker, libertarian activist, educator and critic of bureaucracy. The starting point that supports the entire construction of the work is that “if the individual is the synthesis of the relationship between acts and the conditions in which he acts, simultaneously a product of circumstances and a historical agent that acts on them, then the understanding of his work involves apprehending his singularity” (p. 305). This basic thesis is broken down into four chapters, starting with a biographical sketch in chapter one, which presents the roots of Jewish ancestry, the first years of formation, life in the small city of Erechim (RS) and the difficulties of adapting to the system formal school. It recounts the experiences that shaped Tragtenberg's self-taught education, a path that he, like Gorki, liked to call “my universities”. It analyzes the period of entry into university up to the most difficult years that encompass the period of the military dictatorship, when Maurício was dismissed and impeached, in October 1964, by Institutional Act No. 1.