Parceria e dissenso na educação do campo: marcas e desafios na luta do MST

Abstract

The focus of this dissertation is the partnership between the Movement of the Landless Rural Workers (MST) and the state in the promotion of education in rural areas. From the perspective of popular participation and aimingat social transformation, the author analyzes the partnership between the MST and the state in the promotion of education in rural areas within the framework of PRONERA. Hermain goal is to identify its significance in the broad context of the present partnerships between the state and society in the promotion of social policies and, atthe same time, to discuss the repercussion of the partnership in the MST given the latter’s strategic importance in the anti-capitalist social struggles. Her starting point is the understanding that the partnership in education in rural areas has a unique power forged in the historical process that constitutes it and in the praxis of its subjects. This power enables it to inscribe in the institutional space of the state the conflict that determines education in rural areas, the MST and PRONERA. For this reason the author sees it as a pedagogical space that potentially promotes subjects and a social praxis that subverts the dominant order and is directly related to the counter-hegemonic position of those subjects in social relations. The data were gathered under the guidance of the principles of participatory research, particularly the contributions made by Orlando Fals Borda, Carlos Brandão and Danilo Streck. The main research strategies consisted of participatory observation, analysis of documents and interviews. The dialectical epistemology served as the foundation for the analytical construction, whose dynamics implied an articulation between the historical process, present reality and experience, with a view to apprehend the social being on the basis of the totalizing of social relations. In this sense the author analyzes two experiences of partnership in formal education courses in rural areas held in the state of Piauí involving the MST and the state’s Department of Education. In the theoretical mediation she highlights Gramsci’s theory of the extended state through the contributions made by Ilse Schrer-Warren, Glória Gohn and Alfonso Torres, which, situated in the Latin American context, help her to dialogue with the classical theories, particularly the North American and the European theories. In the field of education, Paulo Freire, Carlos Brandão, Marco Raúl Mejía, Conceição Paludo and Afonso Scocuglia are some of the authors used for the analysis from the point of view of popular education. As far as the education in rural areas and its movement are concerned, the author focuses on the production of the national networking called “For an Education in Rural Areas” and on authors such as Roseli Caldart, Mônica Molina and Bernardo Mançano. She concludes that the power of the partnership in education in rural areas promoted by PRONERA has guaranteed political and intellectual achievements that are important for the struggle of the MST and the promotion of rural areas as places of possibilities. However, the further advance in this direction demands its overcoming, since thegoal is to implement education in rural areas as a public policy, under the responsibility of the state and the strategic horizon of the MST’s struggle for social transformation. Such overcoming implies the preservation of those achievements as an inheritance of the popular struggles, particularly of the rural population.