O direito à educação das comunidades campesinas em contexto de fechamento de escolas públicas: uma análise a partir de Solânea - PB.

Abstract

In the present dissertation work, we aim to analyze whether and how the right to education is being guaranteed in the face of the process of economic-financial rationality and the State reduction, which is expressed in the closing of public schools located in the countryside, in the municipality of Solânea - Paraíba . More punctually, we seek to analyze how the right to education has been affected in face of the closing of public schools in the countryside, to investigate how the municipal organization education influenced the process of closing these schools, to understand the contradictions and conflicts of this process, and its consequences guaranteeing the right to education. We use as a theoretical framework the Rural Education paradigm that emerges from social struggles, from a process of political and epistemological dispute, in addition to the pedagogical dimension, based on economic and social perspective development that values ethnic-cultural identities, citizenship rights groups, and people. From a methodological point of view, we seek to analyze the research data in a critical perspective, considering the political economic context of suppression of the State, public cuts spending, restriction of rights, most notably in education. We seek to analyze documents such as the Municipal Education Plan of Solânea-PB; the Municipal Budget Guidelines Law. We also use INEP (The National Institute for Educational Studies and Research) data; IBGE (The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) data, in addition to reports prepared during the school's closing, used as data sources. Also, we have made use of the semi-structured interview, carried out with union leadership, Secretaries of Educational, managers, and of student’s mothers residing in the communities affected by the schools closing. We could observe that the process of closing public schools located in the solanense countryside is the result of the effects of the market ideology that directly affects school education. However, another justification that led to this process was the objective to extinguish the schools and mixed classrooms present in rural schools in the municipality. The research shows that the analyzed process expresses contradictions and conflicts insofar as the government, through the municipal education department, decided to close the schools, while in some communities there was resistance from the students’ parents who have articulated together union leadership and UFPB (State University of Paraíba) teachers. Even in the face of this conflict, children in the communities affected by the closure of their schools continue to have access to education and the school that is guaranteed through the children relocation in schools to other peasant communities, whose route is guaranteed with school transport. In the final considerations, we defend that the right to education is guaranteed through its implementation, through quality schools, with operating conditions both in terms of infrastructure and pedagogical aspects. We defend that each child may have access to school in his community, where they live and produce their territoriality and peasant identity. Finally, we point out issues such as the possibility of future research.