As ocupações secundaristas como exercício prático de democracia e seus tensionamentos às políticas educacionais no Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

In 2016, high school students from Rio Grande do Sul occupied their schools as a way of opposing the neoliberal educational policies of the state government, which made public schools precarious and compromised their quality. In order to understand the tensions and questions raised by this scenario, we use a critical theoretical framework, in which historical and dialectical materialism synthesize the historical materialization of society (and, in this case, of educational policies) in the objective reality of the people involved in the educational process. Thus, this paper observes the movement of reality, besides connecting the tensions, confrontations and challenges of the occupied high schools to the educational policies of the State Education Network of Rio Grande do Sul (REE/RS). To that end, we reference Saviani, Cury, and Paro, among others. We also use the post-critical perspective by observing that not only the occupied schools brought objective changes, but also that the student movement reverberated subjective resignifications in the subjects themselves. To address this perspective, we reference mostly Groppo, Martuccelli, Dubet, Laval and Dardot, and Laval and Vergne. After semi-structured interviews with fifteen occupying students from high schools in the Porto Alegre metropolitan area, we were able to verify that the educational policies had an impact on the lives of the young occupiers, as, based on criticism of the way in which the schools were occupied, the social movement was constituted and favored the political formation, the perception of reality, and the world view of those involved, encouraging democratic practices. That being said, it is possible to argue that the occupied high schools as a practical exercise of democracy questioned neoliberal educational policies and answered to these policies, putting pressure on school management. Besides, the occupied schools were an unprecedented personal and collective movement of political formation, striking and effervescent, which reflected on the meanings attributed to democracy and on the lives of the young participants in the student movement of 2016 in Rio Grande do Sul.