“Formação de cabeças ou de braços”: tensionamentos entre educação geral e formação profissional no Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio Grande do Sul - Câmpus Sertão (1963-2008)

Abstract

This research investigates tensions among the General Education and Vocational Training in the configuration of the curricula of the Technician Agricultural course of the high school in IFRS - Campus Sertão between 1963 and 2008. The objective is to analyze the process of curricular changes to identify and describe the game of forces involved in the tensions between disciplines of the General Education and Vocational Training, considering: a territorial dispute between them, the power relations involved, the influences of various educational policies and institutional changes, besides other singular elements of school reality, with different intensities at each historical moment. In broader perspective works with indicium of a historical conflict that has permeated professional education in Brazil involving a polarized curriculum between the humanities and the science and technology in the dilemma: "educate for think or to work"? The methodology considers some elements of analysis, as: the transformations made in the curriculum as well as the number of school discipline in each area as well as the relation of the weight of the course load between the two study areas, the changes in legislation of the professional education and the concepts present in the history of professional education: human capital, knowledge society and pedagogy skills. To this end, the sources are basically documentary: research uses the minutes of Pedagogical Meetings, Teacher Meetings, Class Councils and Teacher Councils, Educational Projects Course and the Curriculum of the school. Trying to relate the concepts of Stephen Ball and Michel Foucault, among others authors, the context of school micropolitics is seen as reproductive space and transformer and/or builder of educational policies considering the relations of the power. From the research, it was possible to identify and describe elements of the power game between General Education and Vocational Training, where debates – and the attempts to integrate their - put is more effective than the idealized form. It was found that curriculum were structured from disputes over territory and power, with multifactorial tensions, not always explicit, comprising: educational policies, conceptions of training, strategies of segments involved and institutional changes. In summary, discussions of "what" to teach and on what "valid" and "invalid" knowledge permeated the disputes about the curriculum in the IFRS – Câmpus Sertão. Indeed, a still unresolved debate in the Brazilian educational scenario, and whose backdrop the question of what the student profile to be formed or the individual functions of the school.