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BRAZIL: Social Forum Points to Different Ways of Educating

Mario Osava

RECIFE, Brazil, Apr 21 2006 (IPS) - Making full use of neighbourhood resources to educate youngsters and developing rural education that respects local values and knowledge are several new ways of educating that were demonstrated at various sessions of the Brazilian Social Forum on Friday, the first day of the three-day gathering.

Schools have “isolated teachers in the classroom,” in an attempt to control students, thus encouraging individualism and alienation from society, said Aparecida Pérez, former secretary of Education for Sao Paulo, explaining the purpose and problems of the “Neighbourhood-School” programme which began last year in Nova Iguaçu, a poor township of one million people on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

Other projects, like the “Open School” programme, which opens school facilities to the community in many cities at the weekends, offering cultural activities and entertainment, are aimed at reducing violence in schools and keeping pupils from falling into a life of crime.

But the basic assumption is that schools are safe places, whereas streets are the realm of delinquency and drug trafficking, from which “the children must be removed.”

In contrast, the “Neighbourhood-School” programme’s goal is to “take back the streets as a public space, which is also educational,” Pérez told IPS. It is based on the same principles as the international movement of Educating Cities, added the educator, who is now advising the Nova Iguaçu initiative.

She spoke to IPS at the Brazilian Social Forum, which opened Thursday with a march in Recife, the capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco. During the march, several rural activists were injured in a scuffle with the police, who later stated that the clashes occurred when military police chased supposed thieves into the crowd, and fear spread among the participants.

Some 15,000 people are taking part in the Friday through Sunday Brazilian Social Forum, which includes around 300 activities planned by 500 different civil society organisations.

The idea is to provide young people with “all-round, fulltime education with its feet on the ground,” that is economically viable and involves society, said Maria Antonia Goulart, coordinator of Social Development for the municipal government.

In order to do this, people in the community are mobilised and public facilities already present in the neighbourhood are used, so that students can have cultural and sport activities in the morning, if they have classes in the afternoon, and vice versa.

So far the programme is limited to a pilot project in Tinguá, a neighbourhood of 3,000 people which has a school attended by 505 students between the ages of five and 18. But later this year it will be extended to seven neighbourhoods and 15,000 students, Goulart announced.

It has already been shown that the cost of the programme is 60 percent lower than that of other schools that provide teaching and extracurricular activities for students on a fulltime basis, she said.

There have been several previous attempts to introduce full-time education in Brazil, but these were interrupted, or did not benefit large numbers of students, because of political resistance to their excessive cost.

There are 96 schools in Nova Iguaçu, and it would be financially impossible to double their number in order to provide their 60,000 students with both morning and afternoon classes.

The solution is to make full use of what the neighbourhood has to offer, Goulart reasoned. First, the human and material resources in the community are identified, and councils are set up with representatives of sectors of the municipal government and of society, to decide what action is needed.

Nova Iguaçú is a poor district, with a high illiteracy rate, and the quality of education is low. Traditionally the local government’s approach was one of handing out “social assistance,” Goulart said.

The local people complained that “they had nothing,” but it was found that the neighbourhood had assets such as clubs, non-governmental organisations, commercial enterprises and other institutions, and could offer students a library, swimming and sports facilities, and cultural activities.

The process involves changing the mentality of different public sector agencies, so that all urban policies are oriented towards education, the coordinator explained. Thus, for public lighting, for instance, the priority shifted from “things and material public goods, to people,” so that now the focus is on lighting walkways, plazas, and places where large numbers of people congregate, she said.

But bringing about change is difficult, because it involves recovering public spaces that have been inappropriately taken over by private interests, while “having to go out into the streets creates a sense of insecurity in the teachers,” who were formerly safely in control in their classrooms, said Pérez. She added, however, that conflicts are inevitable, because they are necessary to promote equal rights.

Other difficulties arise from the high poverty rate in the district. Only three percent of the students have ever used a computer, half of their parents are illiterate, and the social demands are immense.

Meanwhile, the Alternative Technology Service (SERTA), a non-governmental organisation in the impoverished state of Pernambuco, is working on developing a form of “rural education,” an educational proposal to support sustainable development known as PEADS..

The new system is based on the theories of the late Brazilian educator and thinker Paulo Freire internationally renowned for his work “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, and on his critique of conventional, urban educational systems which undermine rural values and look down on rural activities.

Schools in Brazil have a “hidden curriculum” that spreads the belief that it is unworthy to be the son or daughter of a farmer, and that agricultural work is undignified, said Ferando Vieira, a teacher trainer with SERTA.

But the PEADS programme “believes in people,” and in a diversified form of education that builds on the knowledge of rural people, and goes from “local awareness to global awareness,” he explained.

When pupils asked “Why do we have to study?” rural school teachers would answer “So that you don’t end up as farmers, like your parents,” according to Alecsandra Oliveira, who two years ago worked as a teacher in Riacho das Almas, a farming town of 18,000 in an outlying region of Pernambuco.

“What this reply conveys is that one studies in order to deny one’s own identity, instead of helping the student to recognise him or herself as the subject and architect of their own history,” she told IPS.

Rescuing the local history of the town and the school grounds and building, and respecting and re-interpreting the myths the children believe in, are among the value-cherishing approaches used by this young teacher.

Teaching children aged from six to 15 years together in the same classroom, from first to third year of primary school, she used the “father of the forest,” a phantasmagorical being who according to legend protects the forests, to explain the importance of conserving biodiversity. To deny his existence would have run counter to the local culture, she explained.

Maracatu, a deeply-rooted local musical style, does not even form part of what is taught in local schools, Vieira related as an example of the inappropriateness of traditional education to the reality of rural life.