The objective of this study is to highlight the need for better teacher training with respect to the Education of Youngsters and Adults (EJA) and, more specifically, regarding the elderly, a group marked by multiple exclusions and strongly present in EJA classes. The study was based on a survey of the literatures on the Education of Youngsters and Adults, the elderly and teacher education, on the reflection on documents such as the Brazilian Constitution and the Statute of the Elderly, and on the analysis of the experience conducted by the Secretariat for Education of the City of Campinas (SP) through FUMEC (the Campinas Foundation for Community Education). After offering some ideas on the expansion of the number of elderly people in current society, on the prejudices related to growing old, and on the struggle for the rights of the elderly, we focus on the importance of the role of the educator to reverse the state of obscurity to which the elderly is relegated both in the social and in the educational spheres. To that end, we conclude for the need for ruptures regarding the image of the pedagogue and of the field of education in society, strongly linked to the childhood, with the aim of including themes related to the elderly and aging in the pedagogy curricula, as well as of stimulating the debate about the elderly, particularly those from the popular classes, in the field of educational research.
Elderly people; Citizenship; Teacher education; EJA