The objective of this research is to analyze one of the pedagogic priorities listed by Florestan Fernandes in educational discussions around the Constituent National Assembly in the 1980’s. According to this author and constituent legislator, there would be three sets of priorities: 1) to guarantee effective equality in educational opportunities; 2) the appreciation of human agents that compose the school;and 3) the pedagogical self-empowerment.This work focuses on this third item, in which Fernandes (1989) refers to the search for an autonomy in the production of knowledges that are bound to the real needs of the country's population, as well as the process in which the autonomy of research and the whole educational system articulate with the process of democratization of the society, on the fronts of struggle in the 1980’s.Thus, this paper is divided into two parts, according to the analytical objectives laid down: first is dealt with the relationship between the question of the dependence of the external hegemonic centers and the conditioning cultural processes and consequent to heteronomy.This historic moment corresponds to the monopolistic capitalism, well evidenced from the 1950’s, Florestan Fernandes defines as the time of "total imperialism", when the hegemonic centers do not know borders or brakes to its performance, operating from inside in all directions, fitting on the economies and cultures of the host societies. It is intended in this first part of the work discuss the main features of the absolute imperialism in Brazil and their expressions in the educational field through the educational policy of the military dictatorship established in 1964 strongly inspired in the MEC-USAID agreements and its consequences on the reiteration of the external cultural dependence and in maintaining educational inequalities.In the second part of the text, we'll discuss the challenges relating to pedagogical self-empowerment in Brazil in the period of the "democratization" of the country, at a time of debate on the new Constitution, from the legacy of the military dictatorship. The sources used are the Florestan Fernandes’ works that deal with the subject of addiction, especially: The Bourgeois Revolution in Brazil and Dependent Capitalism and social classes in Latin America; as well as the writings of the course of the 1980’s, published in collections and files in the archives of the Federal Senate written in the Constituent period, when this author chaired the Subcommittee that dealt with educational affairs in the formulation of the Constitution promulgated in 1988.