Para além das celas de aula: a educação escolar no contexto prisional à luz das representações dos presos da penitenciária de Uberlândia-Minas Gerais

Abstract

This work is the result of Master studies initiated in the first semester of 2010 in the Post- Graduate Program in Education at the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, and integrated the studies and researches about State, Policy and Management in education. The title is: Para além das celas de aula: a educação escolar no contexto prisional à luz das representações dos presos da Penitenciária de Uberlândia - Minas Gerais, and the main subject is schooling process in prisons. It was intended to answer two main questions. The first: what happens on the institutional / legal world conception and in daily life school education in prisons? And second, what the prisoners, passive actors of the policies of school education in prisons, has to say critically about their contradictions, limits and possibilities? In this sense, the purpose of this research is to promote a critical analysis of prescribed schooling and instituted the prison context, with emphasis on the study of reality at the Penitentiary of Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, Brazil, through the dialectical analysis of the representations of their prisoners, as well as national and international documentation related to the theme. To do so it, based on qualitative research approach to historical aspects related to prisons in the contemporary world, needed to understand, then the institutional and ideological mechanisms that characterize the structure and functioning of the Brazilian prison system and, within it, their practices formal education in accordance with the principles and guidelines contained in official speeches, international and national levels. In this way, we examine critically the representations of inmates imprisoned in the Penitentiary of Uberlândia, administered by the State of Minas Gerais, in order to contribute to the knowledge and understanding of the contradictions, difficulties, limits and possibilities of education in school prisons as a process of emancipation and social inclusion. In the viewpoint of the prescribed and established education policies, the Brazilian prison system has demonstrated weaknesses and emerging needs, primarily because the school education in prisons reaches a small number of prisoners in Brazil and worldwide, but mainly the possibility of an effective action for education in prisons is now sustained, especially in the personal commitment of teachers, prison guards and technicians involved in the task.