I agree with the argument exposed above. And it is important to say that I could build my point of view based on our morning class. We live in a democratic country and, parting of this issue, we have the right to choose what is good for our nation as a society. The easiest (and mainly) way of doing this is voting. For example, if we are not happy with the administration of the president or the mayor, the best thing that we can do (to avoid more problems or actually improve some areas that these people did not care about during the period that they were on the government) is voting against them and choosing a better candidate. If voting is not compulsory, we never could exercise the real meaning of democracy – everybody decide what is better for everybody and Brazil could go worse in determined subjects, like education. If we are not obliged to vote, we probably would choose a candidate that applies to our own necessities that never are similar to our neighbor’s, to our friend’s, to the people of our city…and the hole process turning into a snow ball. Once again, we have to think as a society and act as a society. And, once again, that is why compulsory voting is necessary.

I agree with the argument exposed above. As a democratic society, people should not let a minority controls media in general, because it is, maybe indirectly, a form of getting control on important decisions (for example, monopolizing ideas that are convenient for a determined group). We need to choose what we want to watch, to read and to listen to. Besides practicing our right of having a “free media”, we are going against the alienation.

I agree with Marina. Everybody knows that technology was born to help people and make their life more practical and easier – and for me and people from my generation, this concept is even stronger, once we had grown with technology. But I don’t think that it is the solution for every single situation of our life. In fact, it is dangerous in many ways. People are substituting their “living” social life for websites like Facebook, we are losing the habit of reading a book (a real one), and some other factors. We need technology, but we can’t use it as a kind of second life, because we can lose some important relations that we need to build our personality, just like friendship and personal relations in general.

I agree with Mariana. Besides all the polemics that involves the system of quotas and even Brazilian education itself, we need to start a changing in somewhere. Giving students the opportunity of ingress on a university is an important piece that composes the change that our educational system needs. We all know that public basic/high schools don’t give students a good preparation for vestibular, and, because of this, the great majority of them stop their formation on high school, once the chances of ingress into a university aren’t bigger. It is important to give quotas, but I think that it has to be a provisional -and emergency- method. If our educational system gets a huge reform, we won’t need quotas anymore – the chances will be the same for everybody.

(Beatriz1E e Silveira1E)

We do not agree with this statement. For a long time students were afraid of their teachers: inside the classroom, there was a strict hierarchy, where scholars should only be the ones who assimilate the entire subject and couldn’t express their point of view. The teachers were there only to transmit knowledge to children and teenagers, and their speeches were taken as unquestionable true.

This school organization doesn’t work in the 21st century. First of all, because children are not so naïve anymore. In fact, they never were. When children come to school they already have learned a lot and this cultural awareness has its place in the classroom. The teachers, instead of acting like owners of a superior truth, have to be open to the confrontation between cultural and academic knowledge and take it as a helpful strategy to their students learning. That is why boundaries in students and teachers relationship are not inflexible anymore.

There are some factors that attenuate this hierarchy in schools. One of them is the age of teachers. Nowadays, institutions are hiring younger teachers more frequently, mostly in high schools, language and preparatory courses.

These younger teachers speak “the student’s language”, they are more familiar with the slangs and the use of technology that teenagers like so much. Besides, these teachers were already educated in a system that is trying to respect the students’ voice inside the classroom. They are not stagnant in old classroom practices.

Friendship between teachers and students should be stimulated and not limited. It is exactly through this friendly relationship that students will feel more comfortable to ask their questions and expand what they are learning to outside the classroom environment.

I agree with the girls. When we a start an academic life, we have to keep in mind that every single thing that is produced comes from a long time of work and research. For this reason, besides all the help that we need (from books and essays, for example), we need to find a way to be authentic as a form of respect with ourselves and with these authors. I have my own experience with plagiarism: a friend that read a final report of mine copied many parts of my text and my feeling, when I read her work, was “It would be the same thing if a thief invades my house.”

I know that everybody needs help to find answers and references, even more when they are starting their undergraduate. And we have to use books and essays – as a starting point, not as our whole production. Using the logic, the more we see copies, the less we see new ideas for all the knowledge areas, and this, for sure, delay answers for important questions that appear on the world.