As escolas no campo do município de Quirinópolis – GO e os efeitos causados pela territorialização do setor sucroenergético

Abstract

This research aims at analyzing the schools in the municipality of Quirinópolis (GO), especially the Municipal School Antônio Sabino Tomé, and the effects caused to them by the territorialization of the sugarcane industry in the region. The installation of two mills in the municipality, starting in 2004, triggered the process of land occupation for the production of sugarcane, and this process has been intensifying since then. The areas occupied by the sugarcane plantations are land that was once occupied by a distinct production, such as soybean, maize and pasture and food crops. The modifications are expressed in the rural landscape of the municipality, where today the extensive cane fields prevail. This transformation became a challenge to the rural dwellers, who underwent a redefinition of the place from the way of life of the rural community of Castelo. With the change in the productive sector, many families lost their jobs and were expelled from the countryside, yet the number of residents in the rural community and the surrounding area decreased. From this situation, the effects of the sugar-energy sector reached the schools in the field, because the number of students also reduced. Among the five rural poles in the municipality of Quirinópolis, one was closed due to the serious decrease in enrollments and the others followed with a somewhat uncertain future. The situation reverberated at the end of 2017, when a new threat of closure to the rural school Antônio Sabino Tomé was announced. The Castelo community has organized and fought for the realization of their rights, based on the laws, seeking to keep the school in operation. Rural schools go through continuous challenges such as the nucleation proposal, based on the inconstancy of the number of students. It is perceived that the teaching taken to the field is the same idealized for the urban schools, what evidences more an exclusion of the subjects of the field, since this does not strengthen its relation with the place, besides not to provide an emancipatory education. However, for the Castelo community, the school is regarded as a symbol of resistance, as it emerged from the struggle of peasants, from the perspective of pursuing their way of life in the countryside. Today, even in the face of the challenges imposed by the production of sugar cane monoculture, the subjects of the field in the Castelo community persist in continuing in their place and, for that, the school is the hope that these families found to unite in benefit of a common goal.