Revista Brasileira de Educação do Campo
Brazilian Journal of Rural Education
ARTIGO/ARTICLE/ARTÍCULO
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20873/uft.rbec.e10741
Tocantinópolis/Brasil
v. 6
e10741
10.20873/uft.rbec.e10741
2021
ISSN: 2525-4863
1
Este conteúdo utiliza a Licença Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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Between the countryside and the city: struggles for the
right to an eminently peasant education
Naura Sthocco Silva
1
,
Helder de Moraes Pinto
2
1
Universidade Estadual de Montes Claros - UNIMONTES. Centro de Ciências Humanas - Departamentos de Métodos e
Técnicas Educacionais. Campus Universitário Prof. Darcy Ribeiro. Avenida Prof. Rui Braga, s./n., Vila Mauriceia. Montes Claros
- MG. Brasil.
2
Universidade Federal dos Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri - UFVJM.
Author for correspondence: nsthocco@gmail.com
ABSTRACT. From a theoretical and interpretive perspective, the
present article aims to discuss the socio-political context of the
proposal for training teachers for Rural Education from the pressures
of rural movements and the involvement of institutional partnerships.
Thus, we chose as the study's guiding problem: how did the socio-
political process for the involvement of the state and institutions to
promote the training of rural teachers? For this, are presented the
differences between the educational realities offered in the rural areas
and in the city in Brazil; to discuss the emergence of the demand for a
specific peasant education as a process of resistance to agribusiness
interests in the 20th century; and to present the insertion of the social
demands of the rural areas in the guidelines of the state through
Pronera and adhesion of the Public Universities in the formation of
rural teachers. This research uses the method explanatory and
bibliographic having as the theoretical basis the Rural Education as a
space for social struggle. As a result, it became evident that the
political and institutional actions aimed at training teachers in the
countryside took place as a product of the pressures of social
movements, with due emphasis on the MST, along with the state and
public institutions, which met the demands through articulation
between Pronera and Public universities. From this scenario, from the
decade of the 1990s, Licenciatura do Campo courses emerged in
response to the demands for teachers of specific training in rural
schools, representing the increase in the representativeness of peasant
wishes in the midst of debates on educational policies in Brazil.
Advances that, due to the actions created during the first term of the
Lula government (2003 a 2006), were established, giving continuity to
new offers of vacancies in LeDocs courses in Brazil in the last decade.
Keywords: rural education, teacher training, pronera.
Silva, N. S., & Pinto, H. M. (2021). Between the countryside and the city: struggles for the right to an eminently peasant education...
Tocantinópolis/Brasil
v. 6
e10741
10.20873/uft.rbec.e10741
2021
ISSN: 2525-4863
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Entre o campo e a cidade: as lutas pelo direito a uma
educação eminentemente camponesa
RESUMO. A partir de uma perspectiva teórica e interpretativa,
o presente artigo tem como intuito discutir o contexto
sociopolítico da proposta de formação de professores para
Educação do Campo a partir das pressões dos movimentos do
campo e do envolvimento das parcerias institucionais. Dessa
forma, como se deu o processo sociopolítico para o
envolvimento do estado e das instituições para promover a
formação de professores do campo? Para isso, busca-se
apresentar as diferenças entre as realidades educacionais
oferecidas no campo e na cidade no Brasil; discutir o surgimento
da exigência por uma educação específica camponesa como
processo de resistência aos interesses do agronegócio no século
XX; e apresentar a inserção das demandas sociais do campo nas
pautas do estado por meio do Pronera e adesão das
Universidades públicas na formação de professores do campo. O
estudo bibliográfico e explicativo tendo como base teórica a
Educação do Campo como espaço de luta social. Como
resultado, evidenciou-se que as ações políticas e institucionais
destinadas à formação de professores do campo se deram como
produto das pressões dos movimentos sociais, com o devido
destaque ao MST, junto ao estado e às instituições públicas, que
atenderam às demandas por meio da articulação entre Pronera e
as universidades públicas. Desse cenário, a partir da década dos
anos 1990, os cursos de Licenciatura do Campo surgiram como
resposta às demandas por docentes de formação específica nas
escolas do campo, representando a elevação da
representatividade dos anseios camponeses em meio aos debates
sobre as políticas educacionais no Brasil. Avanços esses que,
devido às ações criadas durante o primeiro mandato do governo
Lula, firmaram-se, dando continuísmo a novas ofertas de vagas
nos cursos de LeDocs pelo Brasil na última década.
Palavras-chave: educação do campo, formação de professores,
pronera.
Silva, N. S., & Pinto, H. M. (2021). Between the countryside and the city: struggles for the right to an eminently peasant education...
Tocantinópolis/Brasil
v. 6
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Entre el campo y la ciudad: las luchas por el derecho a una
educación eminentemente campesina
RESUMEN. Desde una perspectiva teórica e interpretativa, este
artículo tiene como objetivo discutir el contexto sociopolítico de
la propuesta de formación de profesores para la Educación del
Campo a partir de las presiones de los movimientos del campo y
la participación de las asociaciones institucionales. Así, ¿cómo
fue el proceso sociopolítico para la participación del Estado y
las instituciones para promover la formación de los profesores
en el campo? De este modo, busca presentar las diferencias entre
las realidades educativas que se ofrecen en el campo y en la
ciudad de Brasil; discutir el surgimiento de la demanda de una
educación campesina específica como un proceso de resistencia
a los intereses agroindustriales en el siglo XX; y presentar la
inserción de las demandas sociales del campo en las directrices
estatales a través de la Pronera y la adopción de universidades
públicas en la formación de profesores en el campo. El estudio
es cualitativo, explicativo y bibliográfico basado en la educación
del país como espacio para la lucha social. Como resultado, se
evidenció que las acciones políticas e institucionales
encaminadas a la formación de docentes en el campo se dieron
como resultado de las presiones de los movimientos sociales,
con el debido énfasis en el MST, junto con el Estado y las
instituciones públicas, que cumplieron con las exigencias de los
movimientos sociales demandas a través de la articulación entre
Pronera y las universidades públicas. A partir de este escenario,
desde la década de 1990 hasta la década de 1990, los Cursos del
Campo surgieron como respuesta a las demandas de maestros de
capacitación específica en las escuelas del campo, lo que
representa el aumento de la representatividad de las expectativas
campesinas en medio de debates sobre políticas educativas en
Brasil. Avances que, debido a las acciones creadas durante el
primer mandato del gobierno de Lula, se han firmado,
continuando ofreciendo nuevas vacantes en cursos de LeDocs en
todo Brasil en la última década.
Palabras clave: educación del campo, formación del
profesorado, pronera.
Silva, N. S., & Pinto, H. M. (2021). Between the countryside and the city: struggles for the right to an eminently peasant education...
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Introduction
The right to quality education,
throughout the historical process, was
withdrawn from a large portion of the
Brazilian rural population. For the wealthy
classes had been reserved access to formal
education, making it useful for the
feedback of their hegemony in society.
And the lack of qualified teachers to work
in the rural areas has become one of the
mechanisms for denying peasants
schooling.
Amid the hardships experienced by
rural people and rural school professionals,
a mechanism created by political elites to
contain rural labor in the flow of rural
exodus, from the first decades of the 20th
century onwards, the struggles for agrarian
reform advanced through social
movements such as the Landless Workers
Movement – MST.
The struggles in the rural area started
to demand not only the right to land, but
access to basic social rights, such as of an
education that was adequate to their way of
life in the agrarian reform settlements. The
voices of the peasants, for centuries muted,
echoed in the national political field to the
point of generating the formation of public
policies capable of meeting these old social
demands. As a result, the proposal for a
Rural Education emerged, adequate to the
peasants' reality, since it should have in its
curricular base the articulation between
content and daily activities, in the 1980s.
From the 2000s onwards, peasant
educational demands gained ground in
Brazilian public universities, through the
National Institute for Colonization and
Agrarian Reform (Incra), with the creation
of the National Program for Education in
Agrarian Reform (Pronera). Lay teachers
i
,
who worked in rural communities and
agrarian reform settlements, became the
target audience of courses and actions for
the professionalization and training of
specific teachers to work in rural schools.
Brandão (1986, p. 14) “In good
measure, the lay teacher is, among us, the
rural teacher. As occur in other
professional sectors, the rural area is forced
to accept for a longer period of time
unqualified agents whose practice is no
longer accepted in the city, in its state”. In
this case, this teacher serves as a threshold
already determined in Brazil, existing in
several regions, without official training,
acting under conditions of lack.
Considered career laymen, for never
having reached the same level of being a
trained teacher, they remained in the
classroom for a good part of their lives,
even if under occasional conditions they
never got to work in their own localities.
Silva, N. S., & Pinto, H. M. (2021). Between the countryside and the city: struggles for the right to an eminently peasant education...
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From this path, it emerged the basic
problem of this study: how was the
sociopolitical process for the involvement
of the state and institutions to promote the
training of teachers to work in rural
education? In order to answer this
question, the present article undertakes a
historical digression in order to bring to the
surface of the analysis the historical
precedents of institutional actions aimed at
training rural teachers in Brazil.
To discuss on the Brazilian
educational context, which entails the
training of rural teachers, as well as the
existing discrepancy between urban and
rural education, we used the teachings of
authors such as Arroyo (2007, 2008, 2012),
Saviani (2009, 2016); to deal with
educational policies linked to the demands
of social movements
ii
for the land, were
used the notes of Caldart (2012) ; Molina
(2005, 2012); Fernandes (2000); and
Molina and Sá (2012) to discuss about
teaching programs for the continuing
education of rural teachers..
The structure of the study is arranged
in four sections, in addition to the
introduction and final considerations. In
the first section, are presented the
discussions on the Brazilian educational
reality under the paradoxical logic between
that offered in rural and urban schools
throughout the historical process. In the
second section, the influences of
agribusiness in the Brazilian economic and
political context for the formation of the
basis of what would become the Rural
Education proposal are presented. In the
third section, the articulations made by the
Landless Movement from the recognition
of the social struggle through the rural
education are discussed. Finally, in the
fourth section, the emergence of
institutional actions for the promotion of
rural education in Brazil through Incra is
pointed out, as was the case of Pronera
with articulations made by public
universities from the 2000s onwards.
The Brazilian educational reality and
the abyss of opportunities
In the case of this study, the
relationship between rural area and city,
returning to the Brazilian agrarian reality,
as stated by Octavio Ianni (2004), makes to
evoke a problem in the rural area: the
difference between rural education
iii
offered to peasants and that of the city, or
even, the type of school that was formed in
these two spaces throughout the formation
of Brazilian society. Despite the
elementary claim of the peasants being the
possession and use of land, the main and
basic object of work and life, reacting to
the expulsion from the place where they
build their lives and resisting
proletarianization.
Silva, N. S., & Pinto, H. M. (2021). Between the countryside and the city: struggles for the right to an eminently peasant education...
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Arroyo (2007) considers that
pointing out the law in its generalist aspect,
as a collective right valid for all groups
without distinction, is a Brazilian tradition.
This, on the other hand, despite signifying
a social advance, does not increase the
recognition of the specificities of policies
aimed at the diversity of collectives that
are part of our social and cultural
formation. Therefore, is established a
tension about the very definition of the
subjects encompassed and their own gains.
Education could be taken as a universal
right, as long as the policies aimed at
training rural teachers are recognized in a
concrete way, since the formulation of
principles and norms do not guarantee
specific actions that in fact take cultural
characteristics into account essential for
the formulation of a curriculum for the
education of the peasant.
Thus, given the paradox between
rural and urban reality in Brazil, from the
point of view of access to education,
Arroyo (2007) points to the lack of
educational policies for the rural area in
relation to other public services offered to
the population of the city. That if evidence
by the own adaptation of the urban
educational model offered to peasants,
disregarding their specificities.
To corroborate with this assertion
about the neglect of the right to schooling
of rural men and women, the right to
regular education specific to their reality, it
is enough to resort to Brazilian
constitutional texts. Despite the first
legislation of 1824 having positivized the
right to education by part of free men,
obviously excluding enslaved blacks, it did
not create real conditions for the
organization of school education for rural
residents. Only with the first republican
Constitution, of 1891, was mentioned, for
the first time, the right of peasants to have
access to rural school, but without taking
into account any notion of specific right to
the population of the rural area.
The rural school, according to
Ribeiro (2012, p. 296), is that intended for
rural men and women, workers who make
a living from agriculture, encompassing
merely elementary knowledge of writing,
reading, basic mathematical operations. It
would be a school “where it studies, and
this study has nothing to do with the work
that the peasant develops with the land”.
Souza (2017) makes evident, among
other things, the difference in educational
practices between groups that explore and
those that are explored based on the
relationship between parents and children.
In the popular classes, which includes the
peasants, differently of the dominant social
classes that organize themselves to obtain
other types of capital, such as cultural,
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through the encouragement of parents to
children to read to the imagination, poor
children grow up without such stimuli
causing, throughout the school period,
difficulties in concentration, lack of ability
and willingness to learn the contents.
On the other hand, despite pressure
from elites to maintain the status quo and
their privileges arising from the slave
system, Arroyo (2007) considers that there
are an exclusion of rural people in front of
the imposed social structure. And, despite
all the symbolic ties that perpetuate misery
among the excluded throughout the history
of the own constitution of Brazilian
society, rural social movements rose up in
defense of specific interests, such as a
public education that valued land, school
and place as symbols of identity and
culture.
This perspective of education
“adapted” to the rural school was founded
without commitment to daily rural
practices, incapable of subsidizing peasants
in the defense of schools suited to their
culture. The product of this was the
continuing disadvantage of rural education
compared to urban education, leaving it,
among other things, abandonment, age-
grade gap, the lower levels of schooling
and high failure rates, since the concern
was to train workers for the new order of
work in the rural areas (Arroyo, 2007).
What happened in the transition from
the 19th to the 20th century in Brazil was
the same as what happened in Europe in a
previous period. A reality marked by the
inclusion of technologies in the rural area
through the mechanization of agricultural
production, which ended up changing the
peasant social reality. The mechanization
of the means of production in the rural area
caused a quantitative and qualitative
change in the production process, requiring
the expansion of production areas, the
transport and communication system
(Sevcenko, 1998).
Observing the historical context of
the 20th century, more broadly, after the
end of slavery in Brazil in 1888 and the
beginning of the urbanization process,
Vendramini (2015) argues that the right of
peasants to rural school emerged through a
strategy created by the ruling classes.
Behind the project of the school for the
peasants, there was the containment of the
migratory flow to the cities.
And, in this case, in addition to
trying to contain the city's insertion with
rural migrants, intensified mainly from the
1930s onwards, the educational policy
aimed at peasants began to receive
attention because of the interests of large
US companies in expansion of agricultural
frontiers in Brazil. These projects had a
strong need for technological adaptation on
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the part of rural workers, making that
education became an important instrument
for the formation of permanent salaried
labor in rural areas (Ribeiro, 2012).
With the advance of the industrial
process in Brazil, the peasant reality
continued with the pressure of the interests
of capital. The practice of agriculture was
being modified with the advances of
agribusiness and the financial sector in
rural areas, triggering a process of land
purchases and leases, what increased its
value and natural resources of products and
land through speculation. To the state had
the role of enabling the use of land by
national and foreign capital, promoting
occupation with the agriculture, as well as
developing industry, resource extraction
and infrastructure (Vendramini, 2015).
For Ianni (1984), the capitalist
involved in this context remained the
beneficiary of the subjugation of the rural
area to the city in various ways, both
through the support of the state in
regulating prices on some inputs, credits,
guaranteeing the supply of raw materials;
by favoring the exports of these products.
Lastly, the supply of the large reserve of
labor for work in the countryside, essential
for the expansion of the industry.
In this way, both the city's poor
worker and the peasants, in a way,
expanded the right to regular education
through social pressure. However, even
guaranteed, highlights Vendramini (2015),
for a long period, the right to education of
rural people's remained marked by
illiteracy and a low level of schooling.
And, even after having achieved this right,
they began to experience the
precariousness and low quality of the
education they were offered.
Rural Education and the aspirations of
agribusiness in Brazil
Peasants who resisted the
temptations of the city and submitted to the
new order of capital in the rural area ended
up transforming themselves. It emerged of
this process of intensification of
exploration and concentration of land and
income a new type of peasant, a product of
destruction and, at the same time, a
recreation of forms of work organization,
articulated with market production (Ianni,
1984).
This adaptation of part of the peasant
peoples who persisted in living in the rural
area can be explained through the
dependence they started to have on bank
credit. Peasant families were involved by
capital with the circulation of goods of
agricultural origin. This, presumably,
caused the dependence of rural workers on
the banks, which began to increasing
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pledge their properties in order to
guarantee the financings (Martins, 1986).
Martins (1986) highlights that the
peasants ended up inserted in a social
relationship in which land came to be
mediated by market interests. As a result,
the Brazilian rural reality started to
configure the concentration of income and
the poverty of producers.
However, this unstable social
scenario created circumstances capable of
increasing social tensions, which
consequently, it gave rise and persist the
oligarchic and authoritarian governments.
In the view of Ianni (1984), it was exactly
this exploration of work in the rural areas
that gave impetus to the emergence of the
authoritarian State in Brazil during part of
the 20th century.
The population increase in Brazil,
both in the rural area and in the city,
favored the flexibilization of the internal
movement of the population masses,
creating areas of social tension. Supported
by the idea of social order,
authoritarianism starts to serve against the
formation of problem areas. Among these
possible areas in which the masses could
cross borders were farms and the latifundia
(Ianni, 1984, p. 144).
According to Delgado (2001), in the
1930s, groups of intellectuals began to
study the agrarian question in Brazil.
Permeated by liberal thinking in economy,
the debates focused on the rural economy
from the hegemonic political scenario that
was inaugurated from the revolution that
ascended Getúlio Vargas to federal power.
After World War II, liberal political
and intellectual groups, from the point of
view of industrialization and the results
achieved by the adoption of the import
substitution policy, began to discuss the
importance of the rural sector in the
Brazilian economy and society (Delgado,
2001).
At the turn of the 1920s to 1930s,
emerged as the center of debates in the
most popular classes the issue of literacy
and the maintenance of peasants in the
rural areas. To this end, the so-called
pedagogical ruralism was presented as an
answer, idealized through the articulation
of a group of intellectuals, pedagogues
who helped to formulate a pedagogical
proposal capable of maintaining or
hindering the exit from the rural area. This
proposal sought to serve peasant
populations far from urban centers with no
conditions of access to school, however,
without teachers from the rural area, the
concern was that those came from the city
would carry out urbanist advertisement in
the teaching-learning process in these
locations (Bezerra Neto, 2015).
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In this perspective, it would be up to
the teachers included in the rural
pedagogical proposal the mission of
creating an ideology that would enable the
peasant to remain in the rural area,
recognizing their way of life through an
education that understood a curriculum
supported by useful knowledge in
agriculture, livestock and others everyday
activities. The defense of this proposal was
not confined only to pedagogues, and soon
became part of the agenda of state
governments that started to establish rural
schools and to meet some initial demands,
mainly in relation to the lack of teachers
interested in working in the rural areas.
(Bezerra Neto, 2015).
However, as a background to the
intention to create a pedagogy useful to
rural people, there was the most important
factor that could enhance the attempts to
contain the rural exodus, the economic
factor. It was a lack, in Brazil, a land and
agricultural policy in order to grant
benefits to small rural landowners. In
addition to no discussions on objective
improvements for the permanence of
peasants on the land, such as policies to
regularize land tenure, were not created,
we can say, mechanisms to organize the
process of modernization of the rural area,
which reflected in the expulsion of the
rural worker (Bezerra Neto, 2015).
However, in the legal area it
advanced, even if at a slow pace, but with
some gains for the rural population,
achievements in relation to the right to
education. In 1934, the promulgation of the
Constitution brought in articles 5, 148 to
158 the idea of education as a subjective
public right. It was universalized the right
to education for all , in a broad and
unrestricted way, encompassing both
native Brazilians and foreigners domiciled
in the country, and it was believed that
schooling would enable the efficient
development of moral values and
citizenship (Azevedo, 2010).
Under North American influence, the
Brazilian government, in 1956, became a
signatory of an agreement to institute the
Brazilian-American Assistance Program
for Elementary Education (Pabaee).
According to Azevedo (2010), this policy
gave rise to technicality in Brazilian
schools, just as it would have achieved
success in American schools, in order to
create the bases for the continuation of
industrial growth. On the other hand, in
relation to the rural school, it is not clear
what was done in this set of actions.
In this context, the despoiled people
of the rural area were viewed with caution,
as they could add to the thinking coming
from Eastern Europe and initiate a
revolutionary process. The imminent risk
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gave ballast for carrying out pacts and
agreements between the American and
Brazilian government from the 1950s
onwards, forming programs in the rural
area of the education such as the National
Campaign for Rural Education, as had
already been done in Central American
countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, and
Venezuela (Delgado, 2001).
In the 1960s, as far as the political
debate is concerned, with the urgency to
carry out Agrarian Reform in Brazil, it was
that the agrarian issue actually integrated
the intellectual and political agenda of left-
wing parties. The first groups involved in
this adhesion were the Economic
Commission for Latin America (ECLAC),
having as one of its components Florestan
Fernandes; the Brazilian Communist Party
(PCB), and progressive wings linked to the
Catholic Church (Delgado, 2001).
In this context of left agitation in the
Brazilian political scenario, it was
instituted, in 1961, Law nº 4.024/1961 –
Law of Guidelines and Bases of National
Education. As a result of the exacerbation
of the debate on public and private
education, the aforementioned sought to
regulate all levels of education in the
country, as well as organizing the national
curriculum (Azevedo, 2010).
In Saviani's (1996) reasoning, the
Law of Guidelines and Bases, Law nº
9394/1996 contributed very little to the
education of peasant men. What little has
been done is positived in its articles 31 and
32, referring to the change of responsibility
for guaranteeing rural primary education to
the private power. At the time, the
legislator understood that would remain to
agricultural companies and rural
landowners the obligation to provide
primary education to employees' children
and workers themselves.
From this set of labor exploitation
and poverty generated in the rural area ,
Martins (1986) considers that organized
social struggles in favor of land emerged in
a complicated way. This is because with
the military coup of 1964, political parties
opposed to the regime went underground,
and those who remained in conditions in
favor of the government did not integrate
the agrarian causes related to the peasant
struggle for land on their agendas.
During the Military Dictatorship
period, one of the groups that remained
engaged in the peasant cause was the
Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), which,
being of an ecumenical character, was
directly related to the Catholic Church and
other Christian segments, such as the
Protestant churches in Brazil (Canuto,
2012).
In 1971, new education guidelines
were created through Law 5.692, giving
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weight to actions for the organization of
primary and secondary education.
However, due to the scarcity of resources
to profoundly change the rural education,
the government ended up yielding
conditions for private higher education to
expand, which ended up increasing the
demand for the teaching modality (Canuto,
2012).
With specific regard to rural
education, the new guidelines brought, for
the first time, the idea of adapting the
calendar of 1
st
and 2
nd
grade rural schools
to the activities of rural people. In its
article 11, in paragraph 2, it determines
that "In the rural area, the establishment
may organize school periods, with vacation
prescription at the times of planting and
harvesting of crops, according to the plan
approved by the competent teaching
authority" (Brasil, 1971).
In this same decade of 1970, began
violent conflicts in Brazil against
organized movements in favor of the land.
Because of this, in 1975, the National
Confederation of Bishops of Brazil
(CNBB) summoned the bishops of the
dioceses of the Amazon and soon from all
other regions of Brazil to support family
farmers, quilombola groups, riverside
dwellers, extractivists, small landowners,
farmers landless, as well as salaried rural
workers in the cause for land (Canuto,
2012).
However, from the end of the
military dictatorship in Brazil, which lasted
from 1964 to 1985, there was a return of
unions and social movements. In the cities
reappeared with the end of illegality those
who had actions articulated with the
groups of metal workers, which gave rise
to the Central Única dos Trabalhadores
(CUT) and the Partido dos Trabalhadores
(PT). In the rural area, in the same way,
movements organized in the struggle for
agrarian reform gain strength with the
large wave of peasant migrants
expropriated of their lands by agricultural
companies adept at extensive monocultures
(Vendramini, 2015).
According to Delgado (2001), it was
established at the turn of the 1980s to
1990s, the transition from the
conservative-modernizing model adopted
until then to one of a more liberal character
in relation to the agrarian cause. There was
a return to the issue in the political and
economic debate within a new political-
social scenario of an economic-liberal
nature occasioned by the Constitution of
the Federative Republic of 1988.
It was in this transitional period that
the movements of poor and landless
peasants questioned about the need to build
policies aimed at an education that was
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adequate to the new reality of poor and
without their lands peasants. In this
context, socioeconomic changes occurred
with the deepening of the fall in industrial
rates and external demand, which caused
an increase in unemployment (Delgado,
2001).
From that point on, the state began to
be pressured by social movements to
formulate education projects other than
those offered to rural schools, marked by
their temporary and experimental aspects.
Mere palliative actions that in no way
represented actual social policies (Arroyo,
2007).
The transformations that took place
in the rural area due to the expansion of
capital established severe consequences on
Brazilian social relations. It instituted the
mobilization of peasant families to cities
and other national borders following the
movement of capital. This resulted in
changes in the conception of peasant
schooling (Vendramini, 2015).
The peasant struggle fought for the
non-closure of the school that until then
had been reserved for them through
various strategies: grouping schools,
sharing programs and resources, reducing
expenses, opening to instrumental
programs for professionalization and
short-term education, among others
(Vendramini, 2015).
The situation of the Brazilian
agrarian question took place, above all,
from the organization of social movements
fighting for land. Fernandes and Santos
(2015) understand that the choice of the
Brazilian State to modify social policies
for the rural area arose from a set of
collection instruments that made with men
and women become active subjects in
policy proposals, including those aimed at
the more adequate education of the rural
people.
The proposal of Rural Education as a
public policy, therefore, emerged in 1990,
through the action of social movements in
the search for recognition of the culture,
knowledge and work related to rural men
and women, being that these are not just
specific to production agricultural, but the
production of own knowledge (Fernandes,
2011).
Thus, as a result of this advance, the
National Program for Education in
Agrarian Reform (Pronera) emerged in
1997; a public policy for Rural Education
developed in the settlement areas of the
Agrarian Reform. Its initial milestone was
the 1
st
National Meeting of Agrarian
Reform Educators and Educators women –
ENERA in 1997. According to the Pronera
Operations Manual (2011, p. 13), the
program sought to strengthen the rural
environment as a living area in all its
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dimensions: economic, social, political,
cultural and ethical.
From Rural School to Rural Education:
the struggle for the right to a
contextualized learning
The Landless Rural Workers
Movement (MST), according to Caldart
(2001), emerged as a result of agrarian
issues that are structural and historical in
Brazil, bringing together the categories of
organizations such as squatters,
sharecroppers, salaried rural workers called
landless, among several other categories
and social organizations that started to
struggle for Agrarian Reform and also for
changes in Brazilian agriculture. The
movement emerged as an active piece in
the struggle for land. According to
Fernandes (2012, p. 496) “in each state that
started its organization, the fact that
registered its beginning was the
occupation”.
As highlight by Saviani (2016),
initially, the issue of education was not
part of the struggle agenda in the MST.
However, with the concretization of
settlements and the presence of settled
children, the need for schools to meet local
demands began to be discussed, which also
occurred in other movements, such as the
National Union of Agricultural Families
Schools of Brazil. Fernandes (2012, p.
496) describes that “the struggle is
dimensioned in various sectors of activity
of the movement, such as production,
education, culture, health, agricultural
policies and social infrastructure”. These
struggles contributed to the emergence of
MST settlements with well-defined
common strategies, as well as policies to
the development. They started to have as
their purpose the production destined to
food security, with the objective of
obtaining income and raising the
organization in cooperatives, integrating
themselves to the predominant productive
chains in the reformed area (Fernandes &
Santos, 2008).
In the social and environmental
sphere, the settlements had still as goal to
establish safe and dignified housing
conditions, these projects, based on the
idea of environmental sustainability. The
issue was to carry out the integral
development of families through the
creation of spaces for community
coexistence and expression of local and
universal culture.
With regard to the cultural and rural
education, the settlements aimed to train
subjects who recognize their rights. For
this, it generated, through education, the
recognition of peasants as tributaries
engaged in the struggle for land and in
economic, political and cultural
production, linked to the peasant reality
itself. Thus, there was an appreciation of
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the family nucleus until regular schooling
(Fernandes & Santos, 2008).
Leite (2012), however, draws
attention to two central issues regarding
the organization of settlements in agrarian
reforms in Brazil. One is that it cannot be
said that the settlements arose from a
single “model” and that the reasons that
gave rise to the claims for land are the
same. In this case, it would have to be
thought of as a space that captures various
causes, spaces that comprise various
activities and various conceptions of the
world. The second is the very diversity of
struggles they have in demand and access
to land, which lead to the construction of
settlements, as there are different struggles
around Agrarian Reform, in the same space
(Leite, 2012).
Therefore, the issue of rural
education also became part of the agenda
of the Landless Rural Workers Movement
(MST), as an important dimension of the
struggle. Fernandes (2000, p. 223) points
out that “in the second half of the 1980s,
the Landless began to build the Education
Sector, starting the collaboration of a
pedagogy of the Movement”. Education
thought for childhood, as a basic
mechanism for organizing its ideological
framework, even though knowledge, skills
and values were under universal aspects.
Kolling, Vargas and Caldart (2012,
p.501) highlight that the MST, moved by
historical circumstances, was taking
political decisions that made up its form of
struggle and collective organization. These
organizations proposed to articulate the
work of education within the movement.
In this sense, the type of education
intended by social movements was that
linked to the reality of rural men and
women, a contextualized education. Not
that disconnected from the peasants'
wishes and desires, nor colonizing, but a
school education resized for the subject in
training in order to answer their questions
(Tavares, 2009).
From this positioning, it remains to
understand the importance of educational
organization linked to the reality of peasant
subjects, who seek resistance in the
education, to maintain their way of life and
work in the rural area. Fernandes (2000, p.
224) highlights that, from the 1990s
onwards, the issue of Literacy for Youth
and Adults was emerging with force in
social movements:
In the mid-1990s, the education
sector managed to increase the
number of Literacy courses for young
people and adults in settlements and
camps. It also implemented teacher
training courses and held local and
national meetings, specializing and
territorializing the Movement's
pedagogy. These educational
experiences were reinforced in the
early 1990s with the creation of the
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Teaching Course and the Technical
Course in Administration of
Cooperative (TAC).
As a priority feature of the MST's
educational work, the training of Agrarian
Reform educators became necessary for an
education in and in the countryside with its
own characteristics, with a pedagogy that
meets the Movement's wishes and the
training needs of peasant people's. For
Kolling, Vargas and Caldart (2012, p.
503), “In the MST's educational work has
been a priority the training of Agrarian
Reform teachers”, the preparation of
people from the community itself who
would work in the public schools that were
being conquered.
This teacher training process
designed by the MST sought to meet the
so-called “lay teachers”, who worked in
the teaching exercise without having the
minimum required qualifications.
Therefore, the lack of qualification did not
make it impossible for them to participate
in the collective production process of the
political pedagogical project, which came
to be defended by the MST (Kolling,
Vargas & Caldart, 2012).
On this situation of lay teachers,
Brandão (1986, p. 14) considers:
To a good extent, the lay teacher is,
among us, the rural teacher. As in
other professional sectors, the rural
area is forced to accept for a longer
period of time unqualified agents
whose practice is no longer accepted
in the city.
The construction of a specific
pedagogical proposal, with well-defined
characteristics and the search for the
training of lay teachers, required from the
MST a more collective discussion on the
organization of the school. For Kolling,
Vargas and Caldart (2012, p. 503), some
weaknesses should be highlighted about
the conceptions of school and the
involvement itself, such as the training of
educators, often disputing information with
state agencies.
As such, the MST put itself in a
struggle for an education that was precise
to its values and social objectives. This
involvement unfolded in schooling and
specific training initiatives for teachers
who work in rural schools. Thus, took
place in this process the development of
teacher training courses at secondary level,
former magisterium, and, from 1990, at
higher level such as Pedagogy of the Earth,
among other various graduations in rural
education, in federal universities, based on
the alternation pedagogy (Kolling, Vargas
& Caldart, 2012).
Contextualized education, in this
way, was related to the appreciation of the
local reality of the subjects inserted in the
teaching-learning process. Knowing the
way of life of their own reality, with a
view to overcoming structural problems
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and weaknesses, both material and
symbolic, became a mission of the
curriculum in the imagination of Rural
Education, according to the MST.
In this way, Rural Education is the
one that makes the peasant subjects
integrants of the construction of the
educational process that is not intended for
the formation of the working mass, which
is convenient to the aspirations of
monoculture capital and extensive cattle. It
would be an education for the formation of
the subject capable of having knowledge of
their struggles and developing new frames
of questions and demands (Caldart, 2012).
From this perspective of education,
the agrarian reform settlements started to
demand the implantation of rural schools
which, according to Molina and Sá (2012,
p. 146), is the one that “[...] places itself in
a relationship of antagonism to the
hegemonic school conceptions and to the
education project proposed for the working
class by the capital system”.
For Molina and Sá (2012), the rural
school emerged within the conception of
Unitary School
iv
, which was based on the
development of pedagogical and
epistemological practices for the
materialization of humanist training based
on the articulation among work, science
and culture for formation of the intellect of
the working class.
These initiatives of teacher training
led to recognition by the United Nations
Children's Fund (Unicef) in 1995.
According to Kolling; Vargas; Caldart,
(2012, p. 501), with the impetus for this
recognition, the 1
st
National Meeting of
Agrarian Reform educators (Enera) was
held in June 1997, which served as a public
presentation of the work that had being
developed in schools of settlements, in
Youth and Adult Education, in early
childhood education and in teacher
training.
Fernandes (2000, p. 224) highlights
that in the 1990s, the issue of Literacy for
Youth and Adults was emerging with force
in the movements. However, for Caldart,
Frigotto and Pereira (2012), the
experiences obtained by the MST in
discussions on rural education were
fundamental for the engendering of the
National Program for Education in
Agrarian Reform. From this position, it
remains to understand the importance of
educational organization linked to the
reality of peasant subjects who sought
resistance through education, to maintain
the way of life and work of the rural area.
Therefore, although the proposal for
a rural school to be planned since the first
decades of the 20th century, it must be
understood that the action of the MST,
among other social movements involved in
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the rural area of struggle for land,
reinforced the need to promote the human
formation of those without access to land.
Despite not being the only one responsible
for the educational gains for the rural
people, it was the movement that sang in
the settlements the need to debate actions
aimed at shaping the identity of the
landless, who still remained dependent on
a primordial issue: teacher training to work
in the Rural Education proposal (Caldart,
2012).
PRONERA: a policy for training rural
teachers
“The conception and policy for
training rural teachers are being built in the
conformation of rural education”,
considers Arroyo (2012, p. 364) when he
understands that the new scenario
involving teacher training in Brazil is the
result of the articulation of social
movements. Along this path, the diversities
of groups involved in the rural area of
struggle for land were understood,
involving the training of teachers to work
in peasant, indigenous and quilombola
communities.
On this treadmill, it is important to
evidence the subjects involved in the
construction of this concept of teacher
training, as well as their contributions to
the political debate and the construction of
curriculum of the teacher and pedagogical
training for these rural teachers According
to Arroyo (2012), two fundamental
subjects in this process can be highlighted:
Pronera and social movements of the rural
area.
At the time of the emergence of
Pronera, Brazil had a rural educational
framework with a very high rate of
illiteracy, very low levels of education and
a low offer of schooling in the settlements
and even in schools close to them.
Therefore, April 16, 1998 marks the day of
the creation of Pronera by the
Extraordinary Ministry of Land Policy
v
. It
is still noteworthy the incorporation of this
program to INCRA in 2001, prioritizing
the participation of young people and
adults from Agrarian Reform settlements.
The aforementioned program corresponds
to a Public Education Policy that involves
farmers in the Agrarian Reform areas and
whose main objective is to strengthen
education in the settlements, encouraging
training for young people and adults in
addition to training for school teachers
from rural areas.
The break with Rural Education is
one of the main priorities of rural
education defended by the MST and by the
Pronera proposal. Fernandes and Molina
(2005) define the rural area as a space of
particularities and cultural matrices. And,
therefore, this rural area creates political
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possibilities, identities, histories and
production of social existence. And in this
context of struggles for education that
meets the diversity of the peasant people
that the program presents itself, starting
from the need for initial training for rural
educators, meeting rural concerns with a
commitment to building a critical
awareness of the peasants.
In the view of Arroyo (2007), what
happened in this context was the strategic
occupation of spaces for teacher training,
such as the Ministry of Education, state
and municipal Education Secretariats, by
social movements, which launched their
demands in order to that the specificities of
the education of rural peoples be equated.
This put pressure on institutions to design
and apply training policies and programs,
in addition to those set up under the urban
and generalist mold.
Following the events that determined
this public policy, Mello (2017) highlights
the involvement, since 2004, of the
National Union of Agricultural Families
Schools of Brazil, the Federation of Family
Farming Workers, the Pastoral Land
Commission, Community Organization
Movement and the National Conference of
Brazilian Bishops – CNBB.
The realization of the I and II CNEC
was a historic landmark of the national
articulation within the process of affirming
the rights of rural peoples to a fair
education training, by struggling for rural
education that is assumed as a concrete and
effective public policy, giving the equal
opportunity for all (Mello, 2017).
As a result of the advance of rural
people's demands for an education that
made sense to the peasant reality, the
Universities were integrated as partners in
this democratization process, with their
spaces for research and reflection in turn of
the strengthening of rural education. The
Universities stood out as partners of the
National Program of Education in Agrarian
Reform, effectively participating in the
discussion and elaboration of the projects
proposed by Pronera, being one of these
important projects of “Literacy and
Schooling for Youth and Adults in
Elementary and High School; Initial and
Continuing Education of High School
Teachers, in the Normal Modality or in
Higher Education through a Licentiate
Degree" (Brasil, 2011).
Antunes-Rocha and Martins (2009)
consider that Brazilian universities have
started to exercise the educational function
for the training of teachers from an
inclusive and democratic point of view,
articulating the construction of new
knowledge with social groups. They
related training practices to life in the rural
area, from the base of the knowledge
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acquired by peasants in contact with their
own reality. The ways of organization of
peasant society and the struggles for access
to guaranteed rights were part of the
debates between the training courses,
gaining legitimacy in the academic
discourse.
However, Saviani (2009), despite
understanding that Brazilian universities
did not seek to be interested in teacher
training of the rural area, states that there is
no omission on the part of these
institutions, and that it would not even be
the case to debate on the merits. What
happened, in fact, was the clash between
specific training models from the point of
view of pedagogical-didactic preparation.
One focused on the general culture and on
the specific domains of the contents of the
knowledge area and disciplines; another
understanding that teacher training should
become effective only through
pedagogical-didactic development. Despite
this, it was established a policy for teacher
training within universities with deliberate
actions linked to the curriculum
organization.
Regarding the training of teachers to
work in rural schools, Fernandes (2012)
points out that its incorporation as an
educational policy was due to pressure
from the MST through the strengthening of
occupations and confrontations to the
State, demanding answers to the problems
of the Brazilian peasant people. The
struggles of social movements and unions
were also intensified for the quality of
education in the rural area, demanding an
education model that was in line with the
real life of the peasants.
Despite having started in the
government of Fernando Henrique
Cardoso, the first signs of social
movements and legal contributions to the
promotion of rural education occurred in
the first triennium of the Lula government
(2003-2005), which contributed to the
advances in the elaboration of formal
instruments to promote the National Plan
for Education and Strategic Alignment of
the Ministry of Education (MEC). This
course of action subsidized the creation of
the Fund for the Maintenance and
Development of Basic Education
(FUNDEB) (Fagnani, 2011). From this
process, through the partnership with
Higher Education Institutions, emerged the
programs for teacher training in the rural
area, such as the Support Program for
Higher Education in a Licentiate Degree in
Rural Education - PROCAMPO, in
compliance with CNE/CEB resolution n°
1, dated 3/4/2002 and the National Rural
Education Program – PRONACAMPO,
through Decree N
o
. 7352/2010.
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According to Oliveira (2009, p. 197)
"President Lula's first term was marked, in
the rural education, much more by
permanence than ruptures in relation to the
previous government." In fact, it continued
in the midst of the proposal for an
educational reform that encompassed all
educational levels, from basic to higher.
Despite recognizing that there were
ruptures in these policies, especially in the
second term, as a whole, they pointed to
the recovery of the rights achieved and
guaranteed by the Federal Constitution of
1988.
Within the scope of the Ministry of
Education, in 2004, it was still emerged the
Secretariat for Continuing Education,
Literacy and Diversity – SECADI, housing
the General Coordination of Rural
Education. From this, partnerships with
public universities to offer teacher training
courses were established, which ended up
offering vacancies in undergraduate
courses to qualify teachers suitable for
multidisciplinary curricula, organized in
broad axes and articulated to the proposal
of Pedagogical Alternation, between
school time and community time.
In Arroyo's (2009) reasoning, this
political-institutional framework created
for the training of rural teachers served as
an example for teacher training for basic
education, because it recognized social
collective actions to legitimize knowledge
as theoretical components of curricula.
According to Molina (2014), from the
meetings of the working group designated
for the formulation of new proposals to
ensure teacher training for the rural area,
the version presented to the Ministry of
Education was instituted, shaping the
Licentiate Degrees in Rural Education.
Through a project still in the pilot format,
four courses were created based on
indications from Higher Education
Institutions by the social movements
themselves. In the process, they were
involved Universidade de Brasília,
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais,
Universidade Federal da Bahia and
Universidade Federal de Sergipe.
From the experiences obtained from
these pilots, the MEC organized public
notices, between the years 2008 and 2009,
so that Brazilian institutions could offer
Licentiate degree courses for training rural
teachers in the Rural Education proposal,
after the experiences achieved.
According to Arroyo (2007), the
formation of a stable and qualified
professional body to work in rural schools
would not happen if state public policies
were not made permanent, enabling from
entry, stability, exams, career of the
professional teaching body, making it
stable. Advances in this direction have
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already taken place. State public policies,
both at the municipal and state levels, have
been concerned with training faculty to
work through public examination. On the
other hand, for those who work in the rural
area, it remained the logic of political
favoritism and its development through
projects and training programs.
For Arroyo (2007), this process was
marked by the strategic occupation of
institutional spaces for rural teacher
training by social movements. Articulated,
they launched their demands on the
Ministry of Education, the state and
municipal Education Secretariats, so that
actions that meet the specificities of
education for rural peoples were
guaranteed. They pressured for the
elaboration and application of educational
policies and programs beyond those
organized in the urban and generalist
molds, already offered to the Brazilian
population.
Finally, according to Molina (2015)
there has been, in the last decade, an
expansion of the courses of Licentiate
Degree in Rural Education, which can be
understood as a victory for social
movements. In addition to the increase in
the number of vacancies, this advance
carries with it other potentials, such as the
consolidation of Rural Education as an
area of knowledge production, not only
academic, but of collective experiences.
This means, thus, the maintenance of a
space already conquered for carrying out
new public policies for the rural area, with
new investments and courses in the area of
knowledge, such as the Institutional
Program for Teaching Initiation
Scholarship – PIBID. And, finally, it
represents the possibility of expanding the
access and use of New Technologies in
Rural Schools, incorporated both
throughout the training process and in
applied researches in rural schools
Final considerations
It seizes, through the analysis of the
Brazilian historical process, that access to
education by peasants was marked by
major social, political and cultural issues
that certainly widened the gap between
their training and that promoted in the city.
The division of labor in the rural area, the
expropriation of land and the lack of work
opportunities continued in the light of
adaptation to the order of capital,
disregarding the issue of peasants' access
to a school education capable of making
them critical of this whole founding reality.
The denial of rural education, a mere
reproducer of the capitalist-exploring
order, arose from the need to create
mechanisms for groups engaged in
struggles for land and social rights. The
Silva, N. S., & Pinto, H. M. (2021). Between the countryside and the city: struggles for the right to an eminently peasant education...
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precision of articulation between the
peasants, especially the MST, from the end
of the 1980s onwards, triggered public
policies to meet the wishes of the rural
people. With the need to stiffen the
ideology of struggle, in addition to the
proposal itself of an appropriate education
for young people and children in the
settlements, a specific curricular
framework and articulated with the values
of the rural area, the issue of teacher
training has become a key issue.
The struggle for access to land, as
well as the valorization of the peasant way
of life, integrated an increasingly
articulated resistance movement against
land concentration. From the very
dispossession and expulsion of workers
from the land, they generated claims for
rights that had been marginalized until
then. From this process of struggle for the
recognition of the peasant cause through
the promotion of an education proper to the
rural area, the professionalization of the lay
teacher, the one who worked in the rural
area without academic training, denied
professional valuation, became, without a
shadow of a doubt, the central point to the
real gain of peasant struggles.
In this sense, it still remains to
understand that the recognition about the
need to promote an adequate rural
education to the needs of the peasants
emerged with the strengthening of the
MST and Pronera as historic promoters. It
has as historical promoters of its process
the MST and Pronera. Through the actions
of these, from the 1980s onwards, peasant
demands began to make up the
government's agendas and galvanized the
attention of other groups organized to
promote education in the rural area.
Thus, having emerged the first public
policies for the promotion of Rural
Education in the 1990s, during FHC's
government, the first term of the Lula
government may represent its continuity.
Public universities, through partnerships
with Pronera, continued to be essential for
the specific training of teachers to work in
the rural area, in settlements and in rural
communities, by offering higher-level
courses, spaces that were unimaginable to
peasants until then.
Finally, in the Brazilian
sociopolitical context, the policy that
favored the training of teachers for the
rural area arises not from the mere
recognition of the state and public
institutions for the old peasant demand, but
from social pressure and the articulation of
social movements, in particular the MST.
Therefore, the offer of higher education
courses in public universities, from the
2000s onwards, aimed at training rural
teachers, must be understood as one of the
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most important results of this historical
process.
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Silva, N. S., & Pinto, H. M. (2021). Between the countryside and the city: struggles for the right to an eminently peasant education...
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i
For Ferreira Jr and Bittar (2006), the figure of the
“lay” teacher in Brazil is mainly related to
educational policies for the Magisterium influenced
by the technocratic ideology in force among the
years 1964 and 1985. Components of the popular
classes started to compose positions previously
dominated by the middle class, and the teacher
began to suffer with a process of proletarianization
of their intellectual functions, creating an identity
crisis.
ii
In addition to the Landless Movement, social
movements such as the National Union of Schools
for Agricultural Families in Brazil and Associations
of Family Training Centers in Alternation joined
together in the struggle for land and access to social
rights.
iii
In the case of this study, when referring to the
education of rural people, in the way it was
restricted and precarious, reference is made to
schooling, education under the formal, institutional
perspective.
iv
The concept of the Unitary School arises from the
Gramscian denial of the rational division of
education into two strands, in classical, aimed at the
formation of the intellectual class, which maintains
the privileges of the bourgeois order, and
professional, trainer of technicians at the service of
the demands of capital as labor. In contrast, the
Unitary school would promote learning from the
spontaneous and autonomous action of the teacher,
which would enable the working classes to
appropriate historically accumulated knowledge in
order to establish the integral formation of
individuals, based on the dimensions of doing and
knowing, of technician and the politician (Zen,
2016).
v
Ministry created in the government of João
Figueiredo, in 1982, through Decree No. 87,457, in
order to deal with the National Land Policy
Program and achieve the goals of regularization and
implementation of land projects. It lasted until
1990, when it was incorporated into the Ministry of
Agriculture.
Received on October 13th, 2020
Accepted on April 09th, 2021
Published on August, 31th, 2021
Author Contributions: The author were responsible for
the designing, delineating, analyzing and interpreting the
data, production of the manuscript, critical revision of the
content and approval of the final version published.
Conflict of Interest: None reported.
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How to cite this article
APA
Silva, N. S., & Pinto, H. M. (2021). Between the
countryside and the city: struggles for the right to an
eminently peasant education. Rev. Bras. Educ. Camp., 6,
e10741. http://dx.doi.org/10.20873/uft.rbec.e10741
ABNT
SILVA, N. S.; PINTO, H. M. Between the countryside and
the city: struggles for the right to an eminently peasant
education. Rev. Bras. Educ. Camp., Tocantinópolis, v. 6,
e10741, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.20873/uft.rbec.e10741