A Institucionalização da Educação do Campo em Minas Gerais: para onde aponta o girassol?

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze the process that culminated in Minas Gerais Rural Education institutionalization, as well as the governmental actions resulting from the promulgation of the “Guidelines for Elementary Education in Minas Gerais rural schools”, in 2015. Therefore, were defined as specific objectives: to present the historical context for elaboration of Rural Education principles as a proposal of social movements at national level; to analyze the conjecture and the initiatives that bring the debate to the heart of the state of Minas Gerais; to identify agencies and intellectuals involved in the elaboration of Rural Education implementation proposal, which culminated in SEE 2820/2015 Resolution; to analyze this resolution, its documents and complementary actions; and to verify how the set of policies aimed at Minas Gerais Rural Education contemplates the assumptions emerging from the social movements and their intellectuals. Finally, the question highlighted in the title of this study consists in the critical point that lead us to walk from phenomenon appearance to its essence, in other words, to overcome the common sense that permeates the approval of the guidelines for Elementary Education in Minas Gerais rural schools, in order to identify whether and how it contributes to “different school” materialization, born from the wishes of settled and encamped communities. In other words, when we question where the sunflower points, symbol of Rural Education, understood as a synonym of peasant people resistance, who fight for land, we indicate the concern in identifying the ethical-political direction of Rural Education policies in our state. The methodology consisted of articulation between bibliographic survey and documentary analysis, covering the writings produced by social movements, especially the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, and documents produced in Minas Gerais governments between 2008 and 2018. We realized that the effort of Minas Gerais governments since this topic entered their agendas, especially during Fernando Pimentel (PT) management, consisted of articulating agribusiness and social movements anxieties, in the name of “governability”, in other words, to build consensus between opposite human formation conceptions. In this sense, we verified that Rural Education policies were subordinated to the “Strategy to confront rural poverty” in order to alleviate social conflicts, in addition to articulating peasants training to the working world in the Third Way neoliberal education perspective.