O sistema de ciclos no ensino fundamental, noturno, nas escolas estaduais de Uberlândia/MG

Abstract

The present study analyses and evaluates the learning process in the newly instituted series “Sistema de Ciclos” in public schools in the city of Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, and aims at reducing the high drop out rate in night programs of primary schools. It also analyses the knowledge that teachers have of this new “Sistema de Ciclos” and examines how the learning process is evaluated. The study was limited to the advanced levels of the system, equivalents of seventh and eighth grades of the previous grade levels. The research procedure aimed at understanding the context as a whole and not just the Specific situation being analyzed. The research was conducted in seven public schools in the city of Uberlândia in Minas Gerais that have advanced levels at night. Open ended questionnaires constituted the primary research instrument and 27 teachers responded. An historical study of the Sistema de Ciclos from the sixties to the present was conducted for a better understanding of the different proposals pertaining to the evaluation of the learning process in conventional schools. In these schools classes are divided into traditional grades, contrasted with evaluation procedures applied in the Sistemas de Ciclos. Documents of the regional school Superintendent’s Office and the questionnaires answered by the teachers were analyzed. The findings of this study indicate that the principles which guide the proposal of the Sistema de Ciclos, as compared to the conventional graded schools, encompass human beings, the world and society in a much more consistent and coherent manner in keeping with Brazilian reality, that is, a society established upon social inequality that in effect. has contributed to perpetuating the process of school exclusion. Nonetheless, the Sistema de Ciclos does not attend to the needs or characteristics of night school students. The findings also suggest that methodology used by the State for implementation of the proposal is inadequate. It is inadequate in that it does not take into account, on the one hand, the clients for whom the proposal was created, and on the other hand, it disregards the objective reality of night schools. A third finding pertains to the alienation of the teachers and public school administrators with respect to the context in which they work and their understanding of the proposal. This alienation is further reinforced when a pedagogical proposal is implemented in an uncritical way, ignored or, presented with fragmented information, without a philosophical understanding of the tenets that brought the Sistema de Ciclos into being.