PUBLIC UNIVERSITY AND FREEDOM TO CHOOSE AND ACT

Abstract

This article proposes dialogues about citizen education and building a culture of democratic procedures for Brazilian public university, inserted in the 21^st century, committed to ethics, justice and socio-environmental sustainability. It comes from a Master's Thesis about the educational environment limits and potentialities of a public university located in São Paulo State countryside, ESALQ - USP. An idiosyncratic methodological process and the triangulation of data and sources were used to articulate the theoretical perspectives of ethnography and Critical Discourse Analysis. The main assumption is that education, research and extension still remain under technical dimension, leaving aside political and social issues, such as food security and the agrarian issue, notably the land reform.