Na mão e na contramão da política: a realização da política nacional de educação do campo em municípios do cariri paraibano.

Abstract

Through this study, we had the main objective of analysing if and how the National Field Education Policies (NFEP), a programme which has existed in Brazil for more than ten years, is in operation in three municipalities belonging to the micro-region called Cariri, in the State of Paraíba. As a guiding hypothesis, we assumed that the NFEP implantation process is varied and reveals different stages of appropriation, and that several factors can be associated with the different stages, such as, knowledge about the NFEP, willingness to incorporate it in the municipal policy, plus material and intellectual conditions to incorporate the NFEP in the local policy. Our analysis of the public policy was based on the Political Cycle (FREY, 2000), Vygotsky’s concepts of appropriation (1896-1934), and Gramsci’s concepts of Amplified State, organic intellectuals and hegemony (1891-1937). All these proved to be useful in analyzing the NFEP and the empirical data. The research was qualitative and we based our assumptions on Bardin (2009) in order to organize the data, which were produced by means of observations and interviews with teachers, secretaries of education, education coordenators and representatives from rural associations of the Municipal Councils of Education in the three places. Among the results found, we can highlight different levels of knowledge regarding the concepts of Field Education, according to the interviews, reflected by the way in which the three municipalities investigated act in keeping with their educational policies, especially those applied in schools situated in the countryside or in schools attended by people who live in the countryside; the application of the NFEP guidelines in one of the municipalities, concerning both the concepts and the actions present in them according to their educational policies; the fact that there is a school in the countryside and that it emerged as a fundamental element for the existence of NFEP; and the feeble articulation between the civil and the political societies in the contexts we have studied so far, indicates not only a reality, but also the need to produce strategies, with the help of the NFEP, in order to favour its progress in the local contexts.