Da polifonia a sinfonia: acordes das escolas rurais de Uberlândia na canção ambiental

Abstract

Environmental education and rural education encompass several distinct concepts under the same name and are topics that have changed constantly in the last decades, but despite being related, they are usually applied separately. Since most of the environmental conflicts of the 21st century occur in rural areas and environmental education is the main pathway that allows the affected rural society to have voice in this conflicts. This study aimed to verify through reflective interviews the concepts of rural education and environmental education that teachers and principals of rural schools in Uberlândia currently use. The results indicate that the rural schools of Uberlândia, for the interviewees, are characterized by having classrooms with few students, a great turnover of students and the students have their own social customs. However, the pedagogical practice and the content is the same as the urban zone, with the differences being addressed only during the daily routine by the teacher-student interaction. For most respondents, there should be no difference in content between urban and rural education. Considering environmental education, we see two different conceptcs in practice: a conservative one, based on the duty to preserve the environment, and another one “the transformative” that tries to make the student realize that them are part of the environment and can act to transform it. Both themes are addressed in the schools in a timely manner, through projects, which usually have their origin in external agents (government and/or private companies), and environmental education is usually under the responsibility of the science teacher. It was verified, emerging from the interviews, that a debate between the different conceptions is necessary for more effective projects and an interesting way to do this would be through the continuous formation of the subjects, a fact that was demonstrated effective in the actions of one of the schools interviewed.