Continuing Education in Rural, Quilombola, Riparian, and Indigenous Schools: Diversity in Unity

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The text addresses part of the results of the research Education and Rural Schooling in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic conducted by groups of the Latin American Network of Studies and Research in Rural Education. Our objective is to analyze the diversity and inequalities in continuing education in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic in rural schools, including those in water and forest areas, in dialectical relation to the totality. To achieve this, we utilized data from 645 respondents from a virtual questionnaire conducted by the research, as well as excerpts from interviews with 19 educators who worked in schools in the years 2020 and/or 2021. We discuss the diversity of human experience, encompassing elements of culture, lifestyle, and the political and social organization of communities. We reflect on the challenges posed by the pandemic in the context of a society organized under the aegis of financial and neoliberal capital, impacting the ongoing training of teachers. Finally, we highlight the diversity of territories, how life is organized, the understanding of education and schools, and, at the same time, the unity imposed by the social form of capital, with neoliberal policies and the commodification of education.