I started teaching Portuguese and French in March 1981, more than 40 years ago, at the then Liceu Gil Vicente in Lisbon. I was a teacher in a public elementary school (with a two-year private school period) for about 10 years, consecutively as casual (I did not receive a salary in July, August and September), temporary, acting-temporary and acting, by the statute that I received it a few days before graduating from public basic education in December 1990 to start working as an assistant trainee in the Faculty of Arts, where I still work as an assistant professor. I really enjoyed being a basic teacher, but I would not go back to that state, because it would require energy and vitality that I no longer have.

According to data from Pordata, 1,147,082 students were enrolled in regular primary education in 1971, and this number began to rise in 1976, reaching 1,528,011 in 1981. Peak primary growth (1,590,552 ). students) occurred in 1986, when the fall in fertility began to shrink the school population. In secondary education, we went from 25,726 students in 1971 to 172,180 in 1981, not to mention higher education, for which we only have data since 1978 …

The 33% increase in primary school population between 1971 and 1981 (38% to 1986) should have impacted education, which faced shortages of schools, equipment, school supplies, teachers and overcrowded high school classrooms. The population, which included all those whose families had never had the opportunity to continue their compulsory education, which lasted only six years, starting in 1964. And how many people completed it? All this justifies the fact that I started teaching when I was still in the 2nd year of the faculty, in the first school, where I went on a mini-competitive form.

In 1981, at Gil Vicente, he taught 12 hours a week, taught French in the 7th grade and Portuguese in the 10th grade. In total, more than 30 students participated in the classes, even if they included students who clearly had serious developmental problems. Obviously, I did not have sufficient training to perform these functions, as did most teachers of that time, especially young ones, in Portuguese, French and mathematics. That is why I still remember and think about my students then and how little I and the school had to give them. Even today, I wonder how it was possible to get here.

I enjoy telling these stories to the younger ones, especially to my students who do not know (and cannot know) what Portugal was like 50 years ago and who, as such, have no protection from chronic detractors of the system, preachers of the misfortune of democracy and democratic institutions, fanatics of elitism and a stratified society, defenders of the “old was good”, opposing the freedom and rights that most of us acquired only after 1974.

Last week, we marked the beginning of a full-time school year in many ways, as if it were unique and important. So I wanted to share some strokes of a portrait of basic education in the capital of the country 40 years ago so that we never forget where we are from and where we are going. May we live every moment of the 2021-2022 academic year with the joy of (re) meeting and with the impatience of those who know that this will pass in an instant.