On September 5th, Bolsonaro’s and the generals of the military High Command’s government have announced a boost in the process of militarization in the public schools during a ceremony in Palácio do Planalto. The federal government now, aiming at expanding the project, will make available to the governments of all areas military agents from the Armed Forces to manage the learning units.

According to the Minister of Education, the far right-wing, Abraham Weintraub, civil teachers will be in the project but surrounded by militaries that “will take care of the management and administration, discipline and civic values”. The focus of the militarization are the schools in poor areas ( with “social vulnerability” and a low degree of development on basic education).

The fascist Bolsonaro who has promised, from his electoral campaign, to enlarge the school militarization, stimulated the state and local governments to impose such a project to the students’ parents. So that the militarization occurs in particular in states and municipal areas, it is mandatory the approval of the respective local governments.

Firemen and military policemen can belong to the programme since intended by the state and local governments.

The militaries that will participate in the project will receive an increase of 30% of their previous salaries before the retirement.They will be hired by selection procedures with the minimum period of two years and the possibility of extending the contracts for up to ten years. One of the militaries functions will be to take care of the so-called “behavioural question” as for instance haircuts and uniforms.

The Army and the “discipline”

Bolsonao affirmed that the militarized schools will advance the education because of being superior in “discipline”. The concern is on what basis this discipline is settled and to what extent it will be efective.

The  cases on tortures in the Armed Forces against young people that became public are not rare ones. On April 29th , for instance, an inquiry was set up by the Public Ministry to verify the denunciations happened in a batallion in Jataí, Goiás, against young people enrolled by the Army. At the time, 11 youths were atended in a health unity. A hospital employee certified, in anonymous basis, that they had developped hypothermia. The families accuse the officers of aggression and of submitting them to extreme situations. In 2017, at the same city, a soldier was tortured and had the aggression filmed by the militaries responsible by the procedure.

In March, 2019, with another torture case, the Army was condemned to pay R$400,000,00 because of an episode done by high-ranking militaries in a headquarter against a young soldier, on April, 2017. The case occurred at he 27th Parachute Infantry Brigade, Rio de Janeiro. At the time the young person recruited was beaten, his hands and feet tied by 18 high-ranking militaries, inside a quarter, for more then two hours. The military torturers used sticks and pieces of wire to attack the young. Before finishing the monstrous offense a high-rank ordered:” Release the dog!”. He referred to a corporal nicknamed “crazy dog” that, pretending to be an animal, bit the man’s buttocks taking pieces of them. The young had, as a consequence of the aggression, one of his testicle taken out and the other seriously damaged according to the doctors’ diagnosis of the Army Central Hospital.

Part of the military coup

In addition, the procedure is part of the counter-revolutionary military coup unleashed by the establishment nucleus in 2015 (whose centre is the High Command of the Armed Forces) that has been fighting nowadays with the bolsonarist far right-wing that, after winning the elections, started to dispute the leadership of the counter-revolutionary offensive.

The generals and high ranking officers (right-wing) and Bolsonaro’s group (far right-wing) try to propel the society militarization as part of their third reactionary task: to raise the repression, the social control and the denial of rights to prevent the general rebellion of the masses ( especifically teachers and students) and the danger of revolution.

School, work and militarization

For the marxists, the problem is not the discipline of the young people or the introduction of the military forms, in general. The specific criticism of democrats and revolutionaries is on the militarization carried out by the reactionary Army with its authoritarian and bourgeois method, whose process will take reppression to the students and teachers besides a police, military and social control.

Marx affirmed that the communist school must combine the theoretical and scientific education, the industrial work ( with severe regulations to ensure the young’s health) and the introduction of “physical and military exercises” (in Instructions to the delegates of the Provisional Central Council on several questions, 1866).

The large-scale industry by itself only militarizes all workers and, by advocating the introduction of the youngs in the industrial work under severe rules, the marxists assume their militarization: “ The general prohibition of the child labour is incompatible with the existence of the large industry and, therefore, a merciful wish, nothing more. To put this practice into operation, supposedly feasible, would be reactionary as – the working time severely regulated, according to the different ages and applying the preventive measures for the protection of children, the combination of the productive work with the teaching since early childhood – it is one of the most powerful means for the transformation of the present society” Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875).

Lenin, concerning the youth militarization, affirmed: “ Nowadays the militarization penetrates the social life. ( …) Today the imperialist bourgeoisie militarizes not only the whole people but also the young people. Tomorrow they will perhaps start to militarize the women. We must say in this regard: all well and good! Quick from now on! The faster it goes the more we will approach the armed insurrection against capitalism. How could the socio-democrats [communists] be frightened by the youth militarization,etc, if they do not forget the example of the Commune?” (Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution, 1916).