Introduction

There are different meanings for the word correspondence: (a) the act, process, or effect of corresponding, presenting, or establishing reciprocity; (b) the exchange of messages or letters; (c) by extension, a set of letters, telegrams etc. (d) similarity, analogy between people, things and ideas; (e) perfect and harmonious relationship; (f) newspaper article published in the form of a letter; (g) rule by which each element of a set is associated with one or more elements of the same or another set (^{Dicio. Online Dictionary, 2020}). In our article, in particular, we treat correspondence as: communication, instrumental (letter), and similarities.

Correspondence, in one sense, is a letter between a sender and recipient and vice versa. In other words, a message only makes sense when the author receives something back. Our scholarly tradition considers letters to be important documents. This applies to the fields of history, politics, and education. We can therefore highlight the Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha, still studied in our schools, the letters of the Marx Family, the Letters 'Written in Blood' by Gramsci in prison, the letter-testament of Getúlio Vargas, the letter of Michel Temer, complaining to then-president Dilma Rousseff, the letters written by Lula in prison and the letters of the simplest people who write or dictate for someone else to write. We also have musical and historical scores, 'letters' that are 'the voice' of the past. We can't forget the current letters from those confined during the pandemic.

By analogy, our job goes beyond that of the letter carriers of the National Postal System, i.e. we don't just deliver letters. With the permission of the authors, we're going to open them and comment on them. There was a letter kept for decades, since 1964, the score of a song by Hermógenes that came into our hands. In addition, we have an exchange of correspondence, an intergenerational dialog, between student Ana Júlia Ribeiro and professor emeritus at Unicamp, Dermeval Saviani. From Ana Júlia's class, we also have letters from high school students Igor Mignoni and Paula Eduarda da Silva Gonçalves. We invite the reader to help us in this interpretation, to validate, question, or agree with our interlocutions and even to reinvent what has not been said.

In Poor People, published in 1846, Dostoevsky (2009) created two characters who exchanged letters with each other. But beyond that, he brought the everyday life of the simple people, the inhabitants of the Russian city of St. Petersburg, the positions of the characters and the author himself on the society in which they lived, and the set of human relationships. 'Poor people are capricious,' said the author. Poor people write letters, we say.

Our article is also a +letter because, at the same time as we analyze and synthesize what others have produced, we have the challenge of presenting multiple determinations and defending a thesis. There was correspondence, in a double sense, between Historical-Critical Pedagogy (HCP) and the Secondary School Spring in Paraná (SSSP). But how do we arrive at a body of evidence?

Methodology

The most coherent method in this endeavor, in our view, is Historical and Dialectical Materialism. Let's break down these three words and then compose them again with other determinations. The lack of material conditions for survival drives men and women to struggle. So they work, struggle, make history, and communicate their exploits, not as narratives, but as people of flesh and blood.

Historical materialism is a concrete analysis of a concrete situation. There is always a more general challenge, that is, to uncover how a social class survives off the sweat of others, and how this impacts education. As an elucidative metaphor, it's 'background', in other words, we always have a broader view of society. Engels' quote at Marx's funeral is very enlightening and we use it firmly.

Just as Darwin discovered the law of the development of organic nature, Marx discovered the law of the development of human history: the very simple fact, which until then had been hidden by the ideological weeds, that man first needs to eat, drink, have a roof over his head and be clothed before he can do politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that, therefore, the production of the immediate, material means of subsistence and, consequently, the corresponding economic phase of development of a people or an era is the basis from which the political institutions, legal conceptions, artistic ideas and even the religious ideas of men have developed and according to which they must, therefore, be explained; and not the other way around, as had been done until then. But that's not all. Marx also discovered the specific law that drives the current capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois society it created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly illuminated these problems, whereas all previous research, both by bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had wandered in the dark (^{Engels, 1976}, p. 213).

We used the quote because it makes sense, as a beautiful text, both on a worker's tombstone and in a possible reading at dawn, when a garbage collector gets up at dawn on a "starry day" to recycle, sell his product, and survive. But what about dialectics? Well, first of all, there's a difference between essence and appearance. On the surface, men are born free in capitalism, but we soon find at least two contradictions: private property and the working relationships between those who own the means of production and the dispossessed, who sell their labor power, imprisoned, often in degrading jobs.

We need a dialectical logic to interpret and transform the world. Socialism would require a new logic, proletarian and socialist, in a single word, dialectic. Formal logic or dialectical logic? Formal or Aristotelian logic is linked to a specific type of society (capitalist) and dialectical logic to another type of society (socialist). "There is no production without contradiction, without conflict, starting with man's relationship with nature and with work. If you want to know the concrete, discover the contradictions, the mediations, and the totality" (^{Lefebvre, 1970}, p. 3). Dialectical logic thus incorporates formal logic by overcoming it. Thinking by analogy, in our article, we can't just say whether there was or wasn't correspondence between HCP and SSSP, there are other determinations, that is, in which sense it is yes, and in which sense it is no.

Letters have this dialectical sense: an author writes to a recipient and expects them to understand, agree, or disagree. This happens simultaneously, even if it's a dialog between the author of School and Democracy and a student, or a letter from the past, from an artist, that comes into our hands. In the second case, the challenge of interpreting it is greater, because the dialectic is movement, a relationship between the past and the present. In both cases, the letter is material, because it is an instrument; it is historical, because it is dated, and it is dialectical because there are contradictions to be investigated. An exchange of letters is a good indication of correspondence, which is why we're going to analyze them to prove similarities between HCP and SSSP; but what is the meaning of these last two concepts?

HCP and the SSSP: The 'Progeria Syndrome' and the Use of Cards

In etymology, geras means old age. In the same vein, Progeria Syndrome is characterized by premature aging, with a vital rhythm that is more than seven times normal, causing changes in various organs and systems, such as the skin, subcutaneous cell tissue, hair, the cardiovascular and skeletal systems and premature death (^{Lima, Ribas, Pereira, Schettini, & Eiras, 2011}). There are at least two ways of describing reality: true diagnosis or false diagnosis. However, only the former makes sense for science. This is true in medicine and also in the figurative sense, which interests us at the moment. When it comes to pedagogical theory, the diagnosis presented by the hegemons and government tenants of a 'HCP Progeria Syndrome' is wrong. The claims about 'the HCP disease' are manifestly exaggerated. Why is this false? Because a significant number of teachers in Paraná, both in municipal and state schools, use HCP as a theoretical reference. In the same way, progressive university professors put the book School and Democracy on their syllabus, and workers' unions use HCP as a tool to defend public schools and democracy.

One explanatory model that comes to mind to explain HCP in Paraná is a solenoid (Figure 1).

There are more than 30 years of HCP history in Paraná, from Richa Pai (a reference to former governor José Richa) to Richa Filho (a reference to the governor of Paraná between 2011 and 2018, Carlos Alberto Richa). Between 1983 and 1994, the period in which HCP was implemented in Paraná, the state was governed by the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB, Portuguese acronym), represented, respectively, by governors José Richa, Álvaro Dias and Roberto Requião. From 1995 to 2002, HCP suffered a negative impact, given the political direction of Jaime Lerner's government, which prioritized neoliberal policies, with outsourcing and privatization practices. The pedagogy of competencies circulated on the 'school floor'. From 2003 to 2010, HCP was given a new impetus by the two-term government of Roberto Requião (^{Mirandola, 2014}). Then, from 2011 to 2018, we lived under the management of the government of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB, Portuguese acronym), which despite many attacks on teachers' achievements, still maintained HCP in the official program. We would point out that this also had something to do with teachers' resistance to changing course, i.e. preferring a progressive proposal from the Paraná State Education Guidelines.

We can highlight some achievements at the height of the two waves of HCP. In 1990, Paraná implemented the Basic Curriculum, there were initiatives to establish a dialog between teachers and the Department of Education, and the proposal was disseminated to the municipalities. Between 2003 and 2010, we can highlight some general advances in public education in Paraná: (a) articulation with educational policies; (b) improvement in national assessment indices; (c) competitive examinations, initial and continuing training; (d) school organization, school size, education portal, lunch, transport, infrastructure and educational technology; (e) pedagogical practices with teacher production, including the Public Textbook and pedagogical notebooks; (f) symposiums and seminars to socialize knowledge by levels and modalities of basic education; (g) teacher training in the Education Development Plan, linked to the teaching career plan (^{Arco-Verde, 2020}). It is important to emphasize that the HCP requires those who align themselves with it to take a stance that goes beyond didactic and pedagogical issues, i.e. a policy of public investment in the entire school structure, obviously the material conditions.

Between 2006 and 2010 there were achievements in the popular field, that is, in public schools in Paraná: (a) hegemony of the HCP, a proposal approved by the CEE-PR State Education Council; (b) strengthening of teachers and other professionals in their salaries; (c) opening up to a new organization of historical problems in curricular subjects and content, especially literature, music, physical education and the arts; (d) national credibility in the IDEB; (e) the systematization of dissertations and theses on the Paraná State Curriculum Guidelines by the state's teachers; (f) awards received from the Ministry of Education, the National Council of Education Secretaries (CONSED, Portuguese acronym), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, Portuguese acronym), as well as teaching awards (^{Arco-Verde, 2020}).

When we look at the solenoid (Figure 1) illustrating the intensity of HCP in Paraná, we notice a drop in the curve from 2010 onwards. We can highlight three events for confirmation. The two terms of Beto Richa (2011 to 2018) and his successor, Ratinho Júnior. There was a reduction in working hours, which made it difficult for teachers to prepare and study, the teachers' massacre at the Civic Center in Curitiba on April 29, 2015, with 213 people seriously injured, and the failed attempts to implement Active Pedagogies. It is worth noting that, in addition to the teachers' 'resistance with blood', there was a struggle to defend public schools and democracy in the classroom. HCP remained the main counter-hegemonic pedagogical theory.

At a time when the HCP was under attack in Paraná, the SSSP was dialectically 'spilling over' into the largest secondary school movement in the history of our state. Since 2015, students in Paraná have been following the discussions and clashes about school and democracy. Five years ago, Ana Júlia Ribeiro was 15 years old.

Looking back at the high school student's career and her exploits helps us understand the SSSP and its relationship with the HCP. Ana Júlia and 'her gang' are to the SSSP as Greta Thunberg is to the Fridays For Future movement. Ana Júlia starred in a debate with the highest authorities in Paraná, especially the President of the Legislative Assembly, Ademar Traiano, on October 26, 2016. Ana Júlia's epic speech has two strong points: (a) a critique of the counter-reforms of Secondary Education (^{Provisional Measure No. 746, 2016}) and the counter-reform of the freezing of public spending and investments adjusted only for inflation (^{PEC..., 2016}); and (b) the denunciation of an oppressive state, represented by the School Without a Party Movement, and the concrete fact of the death of a colleague who was a victim of violence.

My initial question is: whose school is it? Who owns the school? [...]. It's an insult to those of us who are there dedicating ourselves, looking for motivation every day, to be called indoctrinated. It's an insult to the students, it's an insult to the teachers [...]. Education reform is a priority, but it needs to be debated, talked about [...]. Yesterday I was at Lucas' wake and I don't remember seeing any of those faces there. Lucas's blood is on your hands [...] The Statute of the Child and Adolescent (ECA, Portuguese acronym) tells us that responsibility for our adolescents, our students, lies with society, the family and the State (^{Ribeiro, 2016}).

In 2020, Ana Júlia was studying Philosophy at the Federal University of Paraná and Law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná. She was active on social media and was elected as a substitute councilor for the Workers' Party (PT, Portuguese acronym) in Curitiba, Paraná.

The HCP 'tested negative' for 'Progeria Syndrome', it is not a commodity that suffers from programmed obsolescence, made to last a short time. In the same way, the method of Dialectical Historical Materialism circulates among us, and the letters are important documents, they have materiality, and they are evidence placed for the 'judgment' of the reader and our peers, for possible falsification. We immediately noticed an intergenerational dialog, which we'll show below.

What do the letters say? What are the arguments for the rapprochement between HCP and SSSP?

Great men and women have written letters in difficult times. What was their message? What arguments can be drawn from these messages to help us understand the HCP and SSSP?

Argument 01: The conditions of poverty do not exclude the importance of mastering classical culture.

In the Marx family home in London in 1853, things were 'upside down', almost everything was missing, except Marx's love for his children and his encouragement, from an early age, to study, and love languages and literature. The Marx household was intellectually rich, which probably made the lack of material comfort partly bearable. Like their parents, the children's social life revolved around other German refugees, enabling them to learn common customs. But not everything is "[...] wonders [...]" or "[...] fairy tales [...]", Marx and his family paid a "[...] high price [...]" for their criticism of the capitalist system, and in this sense, the legacy and message they left us was: things are not easy for workers, but the scenario gets even worse when you don't master literate culture, mathematics and literature (^{Gabriel, 2013}, p. 316-317).

During his eight years in prison (1926-1934), Antonio ^{Gramsci (2005}) produced Letters from Prison, a vivid document addressed to his family and friends describing the misfortunes of imprisonment, sadness, and loneliness, while showing strength and resistance to Fascism. He didn't bow down to his oppressors and, despite his insomnia and profound scoliosis, he never knelt in the literal sense, nor the figurative sense, in front of his tormentors. Died on April 27, 1937, captive and tried in a court of exception, under the surveillance of the highest authorities, including Mussolini, Gramsci made us reflect on the conditions in which the prisoners were and how he managed to write a relevant message about the importance of school.

To talk about the Saviani family home, the environment in which Hermógenes Saviani composed his music, in 1964 in Brazil, we need to talk about the Brazilian military dictatorship. I studied 'the nights' and the torture cellars of Argentina's military dictatorships (^{Rech, 2018}) to understand the similarities with our fragile democracy. A phrase attributed to the Argentine general, Ibérico Saint-Jean, in 1977, said to his officers in summary form, helps us to understand the conjuncture of the 1960s and 1970s in both countries. "First we will kill all the subversives, then we will kill their collaborators, then their sympathizers, then those who remain indifferent, and finally we will kill the timid" (^{Murió Saint-Jean, 2012}). We're not going to go into the details of the Brazilian military dictatorship, just show the scenario of state terrorism.

In 1964, Hermógenes Saviani, Dermeval Saviani's brother, composed Marcha da Liberdade (Brazil with an 's'). Recorded in 1966, the song was censored in the same year. We believe that this song is a 'letter' from the Saviani family, a 'voice' from the past.

We present the reader with the fourth and fifth stanzas.

Brazilian brothers, let's march

With courage and skill.

Only by fighting will we succeed

Conquer freedom again.

Peasants, workers and students

We fight for the same ideal.

We want to see a Brazil with an "s"

And much more national.

Lyrics and music by Hermógenes Saviani: composed in 1964 and recorded in 1966 (Saviani, Autobiography).

We were provoked by our master Dermeval ^{Saviani, from a score he had archived, to make the song, which turns 56 in 2020}, come alive. Our text created movement from the provocation. Teacher Fabiana Florkovski de Morais, from the Francisco Beltrão-PR municipal school system, interpreted and instrumentalized the song 'Marcha da Liberdade (Brasil com 's')' (^{Marcha da Liberdade, 2020}).

But who was Hermógenes Saviani? When we emailed Prof. Fabiana's interpretation to Professor Dermeval Saviani on Friday, May 22, at 7:44 p.m., we were treated to an explanation of who Hermógenes Saviani is.

He turned 83 on May 5th (he was born on the same day as Marx). He's going to be very happy. When we came to São Paulo from the coffee plantations in 1948, he was eleven years old and had only done primary school up to the third year, because at that time in the countryside primary school was only three years long. Here in the capital he went to work as a factory worker as a planer; from the planer he moved on to the lathe, having worked all his life as a turner; even now, even though he's retired, a factory in Atibaia won't let him go, interrupted only during this period of quarantine. So, when he wrote this song, among many others of his compositions, we were under the dictatorship and he, like my father, my eldest sister and my other two older brothers, as well as my younger sister, were factory workers in the city of São Paulo, while I was a bank clerk and studying for a degree in philosophy in 1966, the same year that my other younger sister, Nereide, had finished Normal School; and the youngest, who had already been born in São Paulo, worked in an office. Big hug, Dermeval (D. ^{Saviani, 2020})³.

Nereide Saviani helped us clarify the event of Hermógenes Saviani's musical production.

What a happy surprise!

What a thrill to hear this song by my brother Hermógenes, composed during the disastrous period of the military dictatorship that began with the 1964 coup! I remember that it was entered and selected for the Brazilian popular music festival on Radio Marconi in São Paulo. On the day of the performance, a Saturday morning, the whole family was listening to Hermógenes singing and accompanied on the guitar by his brother Adivaldo. Disappointment! The announcer announced that the next song selected, written by Hermógenes Saviani, would not be performed because it was considered "highly subversive"! General sadness. Anger. Indignation. Crying. Shouting. It was censorship that was rampant in those years of lead! I feel like I'm reliving that moment. So let's listen to this song, which comes in very handy these days, with Bolsonaro praising the dictatorship and its perverse acts! Resistance is necessary! Nereide (N. Saviani, 2020)⁴.

What can we learn from the Saviani Family letters? Firstly, to validate argument 01, i.e. that even in unfavorable conditions it is possible to fight with 'the weapons' you have. Quality education is an important element, but beyond that, you have to make art to transform. In Hermógenes Saviani's music, we can see the attachment to freedom and the need for unity between peasants, workers, and students. In his melody, he brought in a new element, namely schooling, 'the pen' as an important movement beyond the 'hammer and sickle'. Even a simple man can interpret and transform the world, because we are all philosophers, albeit in a unique way.

It takes more than nostalgia. Nereide tells us that it is necessary to look at the past and relate it to the perversity we find today. Thus, 'resisting is necessary' living is not necessary, because there are always new determinations in life, in other words, imprecisions, are not deterministic for each Brazilian.

Argument 02: With knowledge, even in conditions of poverty, it is possible to transform the world.

Ana Júlia Ribeiro, a worthy representative of the SSSP, is the daughter of simple people, but with an attachment to her studies. Her father is a lawyer and graduated in Social Work from the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná in 2002. He provides individualized care involving social issues arising from the conflict between capital and labor, liaison with third-sector entities, and an apprenticeship program for inclusion in the labor market for young people under socio-educational measures (^{Ribeiro, 2020}).

Ana Júlia Ribeiro's mother, Maria Aparecida da Silva Ribeiro, is a teacher in the Curitiba municipal school system. Her parents show solidarity with their daughter in her fight for public schools. The Silva-Ribeiro family knows the importance of studying. The father said, "[...] the fight is not just for the high school students, it's a fight for all of us who want a better education". He added: "It's a difficult fight, but it's necessary. We agree with their movement. What's happening is unacceptable [...]," adds the mother (^{Martins, 2016}).

In adolescence, psychological and emotional support is very important, as well as the ideology of the family group, but there is no determinism, in other words, the environment is a facilitator, a necessary condition, but not sufficient. There are subversives in unhealthy places with no conditions for survival, both physically and mentally. Even the timid can transform the world. Let's take a look at the two letters from high school students at the Léo Flach School in Francisco Beltrão, where the SSSP originated in the southwest of Paraná.

Igor Mignoni's family lives in an occupation, as the bourgeois would say, an invasion where more than a thousand families still don't have the definitive title to the land. His mother supports his studies, but Igor wakes up early and picks up his lunch for work on the recyclables truck. At night he studies, but he doesn't have much support at home. As he says, when talking about waste collection, proud to have risen through the ranks at work: "[...] the route is long, we finish at 5:30 pm, then I have to take a shower, it's obvious, there's time, but sometimes I'm late, I make do to finish my studies" (^{Mignoni, 2020}). In 2020, Igor was one of the students who didn't finish high school. In this case, the support comes more from the school than from the family environment, and Igor knows very well what an occupation is like in a neighborhood where the experience of fighting over a piece of land is reasonably common.

This was also Paula Eduarda's life. Black, belonging to minority groups in terms of gender, our dear Paula, a brilliant student, didn't make it to university. There is little to expect from the grandmother she currently lives with. The conditions of poverty and state support were still insufficient in her daily struggle, it's not just a question of what she wants to do, but what she can do. However, she interprets the world like a few others, she has difficulty changing and transforming it, but she knows like no one else what the evils of capitalism are.

The Padre Ulrico neighborhood has suffered a process of socio-spatial segregation and lack of the right to the city. The root of the problem was/is the way in which urban space is appropriated, which is typical of capitalism and influences the living conditions of the population. The Padre Ulrico neighborhood has a territorial extension of 2.4 km² and is located in the northeastern portion of the city of Francisco Beltrão, with a distance from the city center of 4.8 km in a straight line, and with a population estimated by the IBGE, for 2018, of approximately 10,000 inhabitants (^{Pagnan, 2019}).

In the Padre Ulrico neighborhood, the city privatizes workers' profits and socializes waste. The neighborhood is a dumping ground. Just as Europe and the USA send tons of garbage to Africa, in Francisco Beltrão, garbage 'crosses the trench', a monument, a physical work that separates the city from the Padre Ulrico neighborhood. We represent points 28 and 29 in Figure 2, where the city dump and a paper collectors' cooperative are located, respectively.

By analogy, the big capitalists have no interest in public school pupils in the suburbs mastering classical knowledge. When the state is an ally of the bourgeoisie, it offers poor people 'pedagogical garbage', insists on keeping the lie camouflaged in the garbage of history, hides the truth, and uses meaningless pedagogical proposals that have not been proven by science. It babbles about Active Pedagogy as a 'remedy' for all the ills of education, even though it has no correspondence with reality.

On the other hand, the HCP and SSSP agree on the importance of quality education and public schools. The conditions of poverty do not exclude the importance of mastering classical culture, this is not an idealistic statement, it is a constant struggle, of successes and failures, of victories and defeats and victories when we draw and stay alive, when some of our high school students are no longer with us. We won with Ana Júlia, we drew with Igor and Paula Eduarda and we lost with the death of Lucas Eduardo Araújo Mota. It's for these high school students, like Ana Júlia, Igor Mignoni, and Paula Eduarda, for the honor of Lucas Eduardo, and for all of us who, in precarious conditions, fight for a better life, that we remain uncomfortable. We deny the idea of the bourgeoisie, in authoritarian regimes, that is, in other words: 'let those who are uncomfortable move away'. On the contrary, those outraged by injustice must transform the world.

Argument 03: The HCP and SSSP have established an intergenerational dialog based on transforming the world through public education.

Anyone who has grandchildren, children, or teenage students knows how difficult it is to establish an intergenerational dialog. This applies to families, political parties, churches and schools. It takes greatness to talk to young people, especially when "we have the high rank", as Igor Mignoni says, referring to the most respected teachers. It's difficult, but not impossible, to talk to Greta Thunberg or Ana Júlia, you just need humility, simplicity, and common sense.

Indignation still moves and motivates Dermeval Saviani. He was born on December 25, 1943, so he is approaching 80, but he remains active, never fails to respond to provocations, and still stands in the way of the capitalists who get their claws into public schools. This is how the exchange of letters between Ana Júlia and Dermeval Saviani came about, on the occasion of our post-doctoral report. As 'letter carriers', we asked Ana Júlia to write a letter to Dermeval Saviani. She readily agreed, on one condition: that we send her two books to get an idea of the author, so we sent her Escola e Democracia and Dermeval Saviani: uma trajetória cinquentenária (^{Marsiglia & Cury, 2017}). We have transcribed in full the exchange of letters between Dermeval Saviani and Ana Júlia.

Curitiba, March 13, 2019

From Ana Julia

To Dermeval Saviani

Dear Saviani, unfortunately we haven't met in person, but I've had the pleasure, albeit briefly, of reading some of your studies on education. I think we have a few things in common: I'm currently studying philosophy and you're a philosopher. On the other hand, you believe in a critical, popular education that is historically based, not reproductive, and that exercises the individual's understanding of their social space. I, however, was able to live and build a fraction of the experience of a democratic and emancipatory education, at the time I didn't imagine it, but today, after getting to know your work, I dare say I was able to live a draft of historical-critical pedagogy, your theory.

Saviani, in 2016, I took part in the school occupation movement against the High School Reform and the Constitutional Amendment on the spending ceiling. What I can initially say is that my perception of school education has changed. I've always studied in a public school, I didn't go through nursery or kindergarten, I started at pre-school at the age of 5, together with my brother I studied full time until the end of elementary school. I confess I liked it, it was a good municipal school, I remember most of my teachers and classmates from that time. The school had a good sports incentive program, which is why I took part in numerous athletics competitions and the "Desafio Xeque Mate", a chess tournament promoted by the City of Curitiba. From the 5th grade onwards, I was in the last class with the grade nomenclature, and I studied part-time. I always liked the school, but some things bothered me, proof of which was my occasional disagreements with teachers and management or the promotion of petitions and class meetings that I organized. During my first year of high school, I was sure that it would be exactly like everything I had experienced so far: quiet, uncreative, content-oriented and full of memorizing this and that. That's where I was wrong, in the second year I took over the school and everything changed, my understanding of the world was shaken up, unfortunately and against my will in the third year things went back to the way they were.

The point is that I saw, and still see, as what is real, with increasing chances of getting worse, that schooling, although important, any education is more important than none, did little to form us and alienated us in the sense that it didn't make us understand the breadth of general and external knowledge as well as self-knowledge, we weren't educated to understand our role and collective space within society, on the contrary, we adopted a totally individual perspective. My concerns about the philosophy of education have always been greater than my annoyances about the infrastructure, although these are just as strong.

However, all my criticisms and frustrations have been accompanied by a defense of the public school and the clarity that if there is an object for transforming the environment, it is the public school and its students. When we say this, people usually look at us a little funny and immediately think of all the problems. But there are two facts that make public education essential: the first is the guarantee of universal education, and the second is the aim of public schools and universities. Starting from the minimum principles of a democracy, public education concentrates in itself the essences of what is popular, it seeks out the oppressed and emancipates them, and it aims to provide human education that is citizen-based and in solidarity. Public schools are the richest asset a country can have.

The value of public education is so unique that I find it difficult to compare, because obviously the money is not worthy of the ranking. But it's the immeasurable value, which involves the hopes and beliefs, the dreams and feelings of an imaginary that another world is attainable, that provokes the courage to place our chips on the struggles in defense of public education. The feeling is ardent and that's why we don't measure the risks too much or waste time worrying about the recognition or material glory we will gain from such a struggle (^{Rech, 2020}, p. 313. Annex 2).

Let's go to Saviani's answer.

São Paulo, April 3, 2020.

Dear Ana Julia:

Circumstances have dictated that only now, more than a year later, have I been able to see - and respond to - the letter you sent me on March 13, 2019.

Thanking you for your kindness in taking the initiative to write to me, I note that you begin by observing that "unfortunately we don't know each other personally", but you have already read some of my studies on education. In fact, unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to meet you in person, but I have followed, albeit from a distance, your important role in the school occupation movement in Paraná. So, in addition to explicitly expressing my support at times, I even mentioned her when I gave my speech at the ceremony where I was awarded the title of "Doctor Honoris Causa" by the Federal University of Paraíba on November 7, 2017. At the time, since I was receiving one of the university's highest honors, I paid tribute to the Rector of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, a fatal victim of the legal-media-parliamentary coup that ousted Dilma Rousseff from the presidency of the Republic. I then noted that the rector was "driven to suicide by an unjust arrest, without evidence, in the face of an accusation about a fact that didn't even occur in his administration". And I continued with the following observations:

Taken to the Federal Police, he was stripped naked, searched, his private parts inspected as if he were hiding something there, dressed in prison clothes, chained up and thrown into a maximum security prison, according to an interview by Judge Lédio Rosa de Andrade on TV Floripa. Released the following day, he was removed from his position as rector and banned from entering the university. Faced with this humiliation and convinced that, with the fascist fury that has taken hold of the country, he would have no way of defending himself, he concluded, as an avid reader of Shakespeare, that the only resource available to him to counter the ignominy and alert the population was tragedy. Not afraid of death, which he demonstrated in his tenacious fight against the dictatorship, he opted for suicide. Through this act, the Rector, Prof. Luiz Carlos Cancellier de Olivo, gave us, with the tragedy of his own death, his last lesson: human dignity is priceless and must be defended even with the sacrifice of one's own life.

It is clear, then, that the cause of his suicide goes beyond psychological issues or personal dramas, and lies in state terrorism since, as a result of the political coup, the Democratic Rule of Law has lost its validity. All these arbitrary acts have been covered up by versions released by the authorities with the complicity of the mainstream media, which not only broadcasts false versions as true, but hides the real facts. In this respect, the rector's suicide is eloquent, covered up by the media with the cloak of an accumulated silence. And, when absolute silence doesn't prevail, the news is given with induced distortion, as can be seen from the way in which Santa Catarina's G1, Rede Globo's electronic news agency, broke the news by writing in bold letters: "Did you see? Death of the rector of UFSC, suspected of assaulting an elderly mother and the most read on G1 - SC".

And only after printing a large photo of the rector, leaving a good amount of space between the main headline and the secondary headline, does it carry, in smaller letters, the information: "Luiz Carlos Cancellier was found in a shopping mall in the capital. In Lages, a man was arrested on suspicion of assaulting an 84-year-old woman.

It is clear that the news has been manipulated in order to induce readers, especially those who consult the internet only for the main headlines, to conclude that the reason for the rector's arrest and subsequent suicide was because he had assaulted his own mother, who was also elderly.

Having thus highlighted the role of the media, I referred to their role in the school occupation in Curitiba in the following terms:

In this case, the 'demonstration by student Ana Júlia' comes to mind. When faced with the death of a student in one of the occupied schools in Curitiba, she launched a libel against the deputies in the Legislative Assembly: 'your hands are dirty with blood'. Yes, among the many hands that pushed the rector to his death are, in addition to those of representatives of the judiciary and the police, the hands of the mainstream media. And the population, in general, is alienated from the serious situation we are experiencing. In this way, the state of dictatorship is opening up and, what's worse, a dictatorship with the participation of the judiciary itself, which means that those affected will have no one to turn to.

That's how, inspired by your statement, I considered that the hands of those who caused the suicide were stained with the blood spilled in the violent death of the rector of the Federal University of Santa Catarina.

But you also reminded me of one of our affinities in the field of philosophy, since you are currently studying Philosophy and I also studied Philosophy at PUC São Paulo. I know, however, that as well as studying Philosophy you are also enrolled in the Law course at the PUC in Paraná. I didn't take a formal law course, but I have been systematically studying educational legislation, which began with my doctoral thesis, O conceito de sistema na Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional (Le 4.024, de 20 de dezembro de 1961) - The concept of system in the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (Law 4.024, of December 20, 1961) -, defended on November 18, 1971. Later, in 1976, I published a chapter in the book Análise crítica da organização escolar brasileira através das leis 5.540/68 e 5.692/71 (A critical analysis of Brazilian school organization through Laws 5.540/68 and 5.692/71). In 1986, I defended my dissertation O significado político da ação do Congresso Nacional na Legislação do Ensino (The political significance of the action of the National Congress in education legislation). In 1988, I published an article entitled "Contribuição à elaboração da nova LDB: um início de conversa" ("Contribution to the drafting of the new LDB: a conversation starter") and attached a draft of the LDB, which was submitted to the Chamber of Deputies in December, starting the process of drafting the new Law on the Guidelines and Bases of National Education. I followed this whole process, which allowed me to publish the book A nova lei da educação (LDB): trajetória, limites e perspectivas (The new education law (LDB): trajectory, limits and prospects), in 1997, shortly after its promulgation on December 20, 1996. The 13th edition was published in 2016, on the occasion of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the current LDB, plus a chapter commenting on the 39 laws that amended the LDB between 1997 and 2015. I continued to follow the progress of the National Education Plan project, having published the book Da nova LDB ao novo Plano Nacional de Educação (From the new LDB to the new National Education Plan) in 1998, which in 2007 was incorporated in a modified and expanded form into the new book Da nova LDB ao FUNDEB (From the new LDB to FUNDEB), which in turn was launched in 2016 with its 5th edition revised, updated and expanded to be called Da LDB (1996) ao novo PNE (2014-2024): por uma outra política educacional (From the LDB (1996) to the new PNE (2014-2024): for another education policy). And in 2017 I published the 2nd edition, revised and expanded, of the book Sistema Nacional de Educação e Plano Nacional de Educação: significado, controvérsias e perspectivas (National Education System and National Education Plan: meaning, controversies and prospects), the first edition of which was released in paperback format in 2014. In the new edition, the book includes the full text of the PNE 2014-2024, according to an extra edition of the Official Gazette of June 26, 2014.

You and I are on the same side of the trench in the class struggle that is being waged in the society in which we live, the capitalist society: we defend public schools as an important instrument for ensuring that working-class children and young people receive a high-quality education that enables them to develop an acute awareness of the reality in which they live, with a solid theoretical foundation that allows them to act coherently and with the technical instrumentation that enables them to act effectively on the reality they seek to transform.

With an affectionate hug, I wish you every success in your studies and express my solidarity with your commitment to our common struggle for an education that increasingly meets the interests and needs of our country's population.

Dermeval Saviani (^{Rech, 2020}, p. 315. Annex 2).

The exchange of letters between Ana Júlia Ribeiro and Dermeval Saviani was the culmination of our thesis. Now, if there is correspondence between the legitimate representatives of both movements, HCP and SSSP, there must be material proof, in this case, the letters. Before Dermeval 'registered' the HCP, in other words, coined its concept, the Saviani Family already knew what a lack of democracy was. Of course, multiple determinations followed, but in 1964, the 'sprouts' of a new pedagogical theory were formed, in a context of the general to the particular and vice versa. Similarly, in the Pires-Ribeiro family, there was Ana Júlia, 'a little seed' that was 'watered', culminating in an epic speech in the Legislative Assembly of Paraná in 2016. But we have more facts to prove the correspondence between HCP and SSSP.

Your Excellency the Suit: the similarities between HCP and SSSP

"Ulysses Guimarães said that De Gaulle called the Fact His Excellency. So, with a capital letter, capable of overriding everything, hechos son los hechos, as the Spanish say" (^{Figueiredo, 2017}). What facts confirm the two-way correspondence between HCP and SSSP?

Fact 01: Dermeval Saviani and Ana Júlia exchanged letters. In addition, we have an enlightening image.

Figure 3 shows the similarity between HCP and SSSP. On it, we can read a short text: 'I support the occupation of schools in Paraná'. At the top of the poster, we can see a picture of the ^{'Occupy Paraná'} page. At various times, Dermeval Saviani has cited the Primavera Secundarista as a legitimate movement, and in 2015, when the first wave took place in São Paulo, the author of Escola e Democracia was present.

Fact 02: The exchange of letters makes it clear: with all due respect, both are philosophers by trade and like the field of law. Ana Júlia is studying philosophy, while Saviani is a renowned philosopher. Saviani specializes in educational legislation, while Ana Júlia is studying law. Both, by "homology", have a training and work relationship with the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC, Portuguese acronym) and public universities: Saviani at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp, Portuguese acronym) and Ana Júlia at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR, Portuguese acronym).

The fact that they belong to the fields of philosophy and law means that, even in the face of the particularities of a professor and a young student, they remain close in the conceptual debate on public schools and educational legislation. We also have a major theme, addressed by both: school and democracy.

Fact 03: The exchange of letters shows that both Dermeval Saviani and Ana Júlia criticize the traditional media. Of course, Saviani's books and articles are more elaborate and Ana Júlia's texts are shorter, but the message is similar. Dermeval Saviani denounced the case of the dismissal of the Rector of UFSC, Professor Luiz Carlos Cancellier de Olivo, who gave us, with the tragedy of his death, his last lesson: human dignity is priceless and must be defended even with the sacrifice of one's own life.

At her tender age, in 2016, Ana Júlia faced her greatest challenge. The murder of Lucas Eduardo Araújo Mota, from Santa Felicidade State School in Curitiba, gave support to the militia and the MBL to make their speech against the occupation. Even though violence is present in schools in Paraná, it wasn't difficult for the Free Brazil Movement to associate the school occupations with this tragedy. However, Ana Júlia, although psychologically worn out, didn't run away from the debate in the Legislative Assembly and said that the "state had blood on its hands" (^{Ribeiro, 2018}).

There was no shortage of people misrepresenting the fact. The Beto Richa government quickly linked the death of student Lucas to the occupation. On October 24, 2016, the press, through Rede Globo's electronic news agency, reported that a high school student had been killed by a classmate after using drugs (^{Rossi, 2016}). However, the same Rede Globo Portal (G1-PR), on December 10, 2016, at 11:26 a.m., denied what it had reported in October 2016. "The police report shows the boy killed in occupation did not use ecstasy. The 16-year-old did not use cocaine or drink alcohol. A student was stabbed to death by a classmate at an occupied school in Curitiba" (^{Cruz & Kaniak, 2016}). During this period, the press, with inaccurate information, associated the school occupation with death and drug use. No one from the Globo portal was at the boy's wake, and so far we haven't found a formal apology, in a state that is involved with the press, disseminating news without factual evidence.

Fact 04: The HCP and SSSP defend a critical education, valuing public schools, without burning 'the letters', without attacking 'the letter carriers'. Quality education for the simple people, not only questions the ills of capitalism but also points to a viable novelty, that is, the mastery of knowledge historically elaborated and accumulated by society as a whole. If Ana Júlia says she has lived a rudiment' of the HCP, let this 'rudiment' be considered relevant, and let the SSSP continue to 'bear flowers' and 'fruit'. If Hermógenes Saviani's 'letter' suggests the union of peasants, workers, and students, then let's make sense of this 50th-anniversary composition.

Fact 05: Dermeval Saviani and Ana Júlia are on the "same side of the trench". They are harshly critical of capitalism in general and the lack of resources for public schools in particular. They don't want things to stay the way they are, where high school students on the outskirts of the city fix the leaks in their houses so they don't get their textbooks wet and crowd into places with an Internet signal, in times of pandemic, to attend something that the government of Paraná calls a class. Dermeval remains steadfast, committed to the causes of democracy. Ana Júlia is running a political campaign in Curitiba for the position of councilor. And we, in times of pandemic, are defending the right to education for secondary school students from the periphery and the lives of all, in dark times, where the 'suggestion' is for a kind of Progeria Syndrome, in the literal sense, that is, premature death seems to be normal.

Fact 06: The Secondary School Spring did not take place in private schools, or private colleges and universities. It, therefore, corresponds to the HCP because, from a theoretical and practical point of view, we are on the same 'side of the trench'. We discard the idea that the Primavera Secundarista is just a youth protagonist activity, typical of young people. If this hypothesis were true, the Primavera Secundarista or another similar movement would also have taken place in private institutions in Paraná.

The Primavera Secundarista was a public school movement. In the case of Paraná, it began on the outskirts, where the poorest workers live, with their children in public schools. So it was in the educational centers of Curitiba, Cascavel, Foz do Iguaçu, Dois Vizinhos, and Francisco Beltrão. In some cases, the first school occupations were in rural schools.

Fact 07: In 2020, the practical evidence shows that HCP and SSSP were correct about the technical unfeasibility of Provisional Measure 746, the origin of the high school students' dispute. In practice, looking at how this process has unfolded over the last four years, we can see the obvious: the itinerary proposal didn't work. The fact is that as well as being camouflaged, the itinerary proposal has proved to have no practical viability since the majority of municipalities have an average of two schools, and it is not possible to accommodate five different training itineraries, an 'account that doesn't close in the real test'.

Conclusion

Considering the arguments and the facts, we can say that this could only have happened, that is, the SSSP was not a natural movement, but the result of multiple determinations, one of which was the close similarity and agreement with the HCP, a mutual interference. On the one hand, the technical mastery of the secondary school students and, on the other, the 'provocations' they made to the state and us progressive teachers.

In this sense, the arguments and the facts consist of two events. An event is an observable occurrence that can be seen, perceived, felt, and rationalized, in other words, understood as evidence. An event is also a solemnity, which can be a party or a wake, organized by experts in the field, for community or promotional purposes. Events have a spontaneous appearance, but on the contrary, they are organized and problematized in a way that is not obvious, like the SSSP, for example.

The first event is unique. It was no coincidence that the SSSP, in the southwest of Paraná, began in the Padre Ulrico neighborhood. There is socio-spatial and historical segregation. The history of the Padre Ulrico neighborhood is the history of marginality in two senses. The first is the ghetto, a place of simple, poor people, bordered by highways and the Marrecas River. The second is marginalized access to goods, forgotten by the state. It's a history of occupations, from the plots of land for those who have nowhere to live, to the occupation by high school students of the Léo Flach School, in other words, the SSSP. It wasn't by chance that we started the fight against the destruction of public schools in Francisco Beltrão and the defense of democracy in schools here.

We are now going back and arguing that, in the Padre Ulrico neighborhood, given the outrageous attacks on democracy, the history of marginalization, and the threats to the school, this was the only way forward: the occupation of the schools in 2016 and the strengthening of the SSSP.

From the particular to the general, we realize that the SSSP has been the great student-political event in Paraná in the 21st century so far. Proportionally, our state had the highest number of occupied schools in 2016. This is where Ana Júlia, Paula Eduarda, and Igor Mignoni came from. We find in our state the contradictions of capitalism and the contradictions of our fragile democracy. This is 'the land' of Operation Car Wash, 'the land' that imprisoned Lula, 'the land' of Fachin, but also, by contradiction, 'the land' of Ana Júlia. The chaos became crystal clear at the end of our article; to tell the truth, there was resistance here.

In Paraná, there was the biggest massacre of Brazilian teachers on April 29, 2015, an event that shames the history of our state, but it is also the 'land' of the HCP, taken over by the teachers more than thirty years ago. We are 'the land' of the APP-Sindicato, of the state and federal public universities created under the PT governments, and we are the political, didactic, and pedagogical resistance. We are on the other side of the trench, we stand in the way of big business.

Finally, we are 'the land' of the HCP, which has correspondence with the SSSP.