Carolline's graduation

Her name is, indeed, Carolline, double ll, Carol. She is Flavia’s daughter, my brother Sergio’s first granddaughter. She is 18 and just finished normal school, elementary teacher training. She attended Julia Kubitscheck Normal School where once upon many years I passed grueling exams and was hired to teach sociology of education. Because we had a dictatorship in power at the time, and sociologists were officially considered by nature to be subversivos--people who questioned and preached against the status quo--the discipline was removed from the curriculum. I had to teach “Moral and Civics” instead, more agreeable to the always holy Right. I had a fight with the principal, a man who I perceived to be a pro-military tug, Araquem, and found best to leave the school.

When the family mentioned commencement taking place on December 28 at 7 p.m., I did not hesitate. I was going to attend for two reasons. First, I wanted to be part of the family gathering to honor Carol at this important rite of passage. Second, I wanted very much to find out about how the ceremony would be conducted, thirty years after I had the opportunity to be at one.

It was 1974. I had left Julia K. two years before, after being criticized for being “too close to the students—they like you.” (Truthfully, I was too young, rebellious, and too enthusiastic of a teacher to take the principal seriously then. I would reason with him differently today.) The graduating class of 1974 had chosen me as “class best teacher.” This was an honor. I walked proudly to receive the plaque from no less than Araquem’s very hands. It was victory over the reactionary principal; I felt love for those students who elected me two years after I had disappeared from the school. (This plaque today is in my office at SUNY Oswego.)

When I got to Tijuca Tennis Club I had to wait outside for 20 minutes or so before I found Carol with the invitation. With that, I entered the gymnasium where the ceremony was going to be held. It was about 90 degrees F.inside, one of the hottest days of summer in Rio thus far. Many people had brought hand held fans or improvised them from discarded sheets of paper and fanned themselves away, trying to breath the hot air. Students put on black robes with long sleeves, small cascading white lace bibs (I am sure there must be a correct name for this) and a blue satin sash pinned around the waist. It could not be worst academic garb for the weather. Teachers wore clothes, only graduates were robed.

I sat besides Zelia, my brother’s wife #1, Carol’s grandmother. We saved four seats for some of the rest of the family who came in later: Sergio, his wife #3, Nereida and their daughter Marcela; Isa, Carol’s younger sister; Flavia and her husband Fabio; Fabio, Flavia’s brother, and his pregnant wife Daniela, Dany. Carol’s live-in boyfriend Rodrigo also came. Then there were the grandparents from Carol’s father’s family who I had never met, and their daughter, Carol’s godmother. Yes, lots of people to cheer.

The ceremony was a full hour late starting. The program had 16 items. It lasted from 8 to 11 p.m. The graduating group of teenage teachers was divided into six classes. Item #1, entrance: students came in by alphabetical order of their first name (not last name as it is common in Brazil) by class. Each graduate walked in accompanied by a “graduation godparent” (male or female) who they embraced and kissed on both sides of the cheek before he or she sat at the chair, and the godparent walked out of the court. My brother was Carol’s graduation godfather. After the 150 or so graduates were finally seated, activity number two on the program started.

Number 2 – Ecumenical Service. The very short blessing that used to be, and it still is at commencements in the States, became almost a full-length evangelical service, complete with two sermons, reading from the Bible, and many hymns! I could not believe my eyes! There was nothing “ecumenical” about this obviously Protestant service. Now, remember, Brazil is the largest Catholic country in the world… I was aghast. Why? The students, however, seemed to be enjoying, at least during the more animated songs when they could clap or sway. They seemed to know the hymns, or songs, something like pop songs one would hear on Christian radio. (Later a sociologist friend explained, as I kept saying, indignant, “This is a public school!” He said that since an evangelical couple, husband and wife, had been state governors in succession, and the Worker’s Party had as head Benedita, also an evangelical, as the mayor of Rio, that religion got a new life in public schools, this time with Protestant flavor. Religious instruction is still optional for students, though. He thus gave me the institutional context for why this was happening at graduation.) Amem.

Forty-five minutes later we had #3, the official commencement opening with the principal—a very attractive woman, dressed a bit seductively for American standards for such occasion—calling the teachers forth to sit at the head table located in front of the students’ chairs and beside the podium. As I said, teachers came in party clothes, two of the women in sequins. As teachers were called, students cheered more or less, clearly demonstrating their preferences with loudness. The most cheered was an African Brazilian teacher. One teacher came in several minutes late.

After teachers were seated, a Music teachers conducted the students singing the Brazilian National Anthem, the crowd standing and following along. I always choke on anthems and often sing them for fun on my own. So, I had a few tears and looked sternly at two teens behind me who were chatting away, no respect for the Fatherland!

Unfortunately I did not hear the speech by graduating senior Luan, a male student, one of five or six I could count in the crowd. I did not hear because I had tissue inside my left, the good ear. The sound system was terribly loud throughout the ceremony. So loud, in fact, that I could hear everything with my deaf ear! I was not really paying attention to the full text, though. Sorry. It was about the usual, new life graduates are about to begin. One of the students was carrying a sign that she would prop up throughout the ceremony: “I need a job!” Very familiar, indeed.

The speech (#5) was followed by students singing the school’s anthem (#6), and the speech by the class paraninfo—the invited speaker (#7). This was a female teacher educator from the school itself who wished the students all the best in their lives as a teacher. A musical interlude followed (#8).

Each student in each of the classes had their names read aloud (#9), and one of the graduates conducted a swearing (#10), students repeating after her: “With my thoughts [focused] on Brazil, and conscious of the responsibility of the mission with which I am entrusted, I promise to consecrate the best of my energies, my purest sentiments, and all of my idealism to national education, to the greatness of the Fatherland, and the happiness of Brazilian children.”

(Note here, please: children’s happiness, NOT scholastic achievement measured by grades. There is hope in the world!)

Degrees were awarded (#11) collectively and the diplomas were handed individually by class, with students joining for one last class picture holding their (empty) diploma cases in their hands (#12). The real thing will come later. Afterwards, students threw their hats up in the air, just like students in the U.S.

Number 12 was recognition of teachers and staff as selected by the students. One of them, a female teacher, sang a very well-known ballad about love from a favorite Brazilian singer, Roberto Carlos. Students and the crowd, sang with her because the words and the song are so well-liked. Emotions were high. I thought that Paulo Freire, for whom the whole group of graduates was named, would be happy about all the talk about love that teachers must have for their students, as the teacher-singer exemplified, if too sentimentally.

The principal the spoke brief farewell words, and activity #14 was skipped, words by the highest authority present—there was none (thankfully, given the late hour…) While the coral organized to sing, students kept leaving their seats and getting in groups, or individually, for pictures taken by relatives. General chaos in the rink. The song led to all the students and teachers to improvise and form a circle holding hands for the last time, so said the principal, as students and now teachers. Someone said, “please return to your seats,” but before that happened, the machine prepared to shoot small pieces of silver paper was set in motion. This elevated the mood even higher and chaos could no longer be contained under the silver paper rain. Then #16 happened, the principal declared the ceremony closed.

Parents and relatives invaded the gym for more hugs, kisses, and pictures. The crowds dispersed slowly just after 11 p.m. My family proceeded to go to a restaurant, La Mole, where we had good meals. I was too tired to eat a full meal that late; I had only one of my favorite desserts instead, papayette, papaya mixed with vanilla ice cream and drizzled with liqueur de Cassis. I got home at 1:30 in the morning, taken by Fabio and Dany.

This is the first time I have tried to upload pictures. In the first one Fabio is fixing Carol's cap while Rodrigo, her live-in boyfriend, looks at her. In the second picture all the family members are with Carol, her mom Flavia, grandmother Zelia, my brother Sergio, Isa her sister...