Escolas militarizadas no Maranhão: um estudo sobre a parceria entre corporações militares e redes públicas de ensino

Abstract

This dissertation, entitled Militarized Schools in Maranhão: a Study on the Partnership Between Military Corporations and the Public School System Networks, was guided by the following research problem: what is the motivation that underlies the interest by Maranhão‟s Public School System in establishing partnerships with the Military Fire Corp, as well as the Military Police, enabling these forces to take on the administrative and pedagogical management in this militarized schools? Which effects are produced by such partnerships in the administrative and pedagogical management of these militarized schools? The objectives of the research were: to map and to study the reasons that lead the Public School System Networks to turn themselves into militarized (Military/Local or State School) systems; to understand how the cooperation agreements between the Public Security Secretary and Municipal/State education networks of Maranhão are conceived and amplified; finally, to understand the effects of such partnerships on the Political-Pedagogical Projects (PPPs) within the studied networks. The methodology adopted includes the documental analysis and the comprehensive interview. The empirical material was constituted of official documents from the militarized schools (rules of implementation, terms of cooperation, PPPs, rules and internal regiments); and by the transcription of seven interviews with the secretaries of education, and two interviews with the Boards of Teaching of both the Fire Corp and the Military Police. The study presents: a survey related to number, typology, and localization of the military schools in Brazil; a discussion about neoliberalism on the interface with neoconservatism and the Brazilian educational reform, including the process of school militarization; and the analysis of the empirical material. This analysis was conducted through four analytical categories: the celebrated partnerships between the public-school network and the military corporations in Maranhão; the structure and functioning of militarized schools in Maranhão; the discipline and the “place” of the pedagogical aspects in militarized schools in Maranhão; and, finally, the “improvement” of the educational indicators in the militarized schools in Maranhão and their performativity. Among the main findings of this research, it is possible to highlight the following: what mobilizes the Networks to turn public schools into militarized ones is the possibility of “solving” the violence and the indiscipline problems in schools located in vulnerable regions, which does not favor a more profound discussion about social inequity in Contemporaneity; militarized management sets the tone in the school functions, as well as the pedagogical “contours”, which are based on discipline, hierarchy, organization and performativity, in a way that the pedagogical aspect is re-inscribed in this logic; militarized schools gain credibility by reviving values from the past, with a rigid discipline and some moral values; they generate the exclusion of students by eligibility, by charging fees and through transferring students that do not adapt to the norms; these militarized schools have teachers that adapt to the philosophy of the school; they gain credibility by their performativity made evident in the obtained results on the external examinations.