A escola pública como direito para as classes populares: exclusão e inclusão nos processos de ensino, avaliação e aprendizagens em escolas municipais de Uberlândia-MG

Abstract

This doctoral research had as main objective to analyze the public school as a right for the popular classes, having as an empirical reference the municipal schools of the city of Uberlândia-MG. To achieve this goal, we seek to understand the various obstacles imposed on public education in Brazil, resulting from the capitalist logic in times of neoliberalism; the didactic-pedagogical procedures, with emphasis on the evaluative processes of teachers of the 3rd year of elementary school, identifying what, how and under what conditions the teaching and learning processes are taking place; and, the possible forms of resistance and inclusive practices that can favor learning, which are attuned to an emancipatory education perspective. For this analysis, the bibliographic dialogue established, especially with Freire (1979, 1996, 2005), Freitas (1995, 2007), Bourdieu (1989), Fernandes (2009, 2011), Esteban (2001), was of fundamental importance. Regarding the methodological procedures, we opted for the development of qualitative research, as it is an approach that is interested in “articulation with the concrete reality” (MINAYO, 2005, p. 19) and the dialectic that involves social relations about the object under study. Regarding the criteria adopted for empirical observations, we opted for four schools, which offer the initial years of elementary school and are located in peripheral and poor regions of the city of Uberlândia-MG. Referring to the premises of participant observation, four teachers had their pedagogical work observed during an academic semester, whose intention was to investigate the different moments of the teaching and learning processes directed to students in these respective classrooms. In the work of data collection, in addition to the field diary and the semi-structured interview, we also resort to educational legislation (laws, decrees and standards) referring to the evaluation. We also analyzed the four Political-Pedagogical Projects of the municipal schools surveyed. The results showed that the teaching and evaluation procedures are substantially based on the transmission of contents that, in most cases, do not promote the connection between the lived and the learned, leaving students with an education based on the banking perspective (FREIRE, 1996). This study also revealed that, despite this harsh reality and the historical governmental lack of commitment to social issues, the public school was and continues to be an important achievement of the popular classes; a space where different realities meet and interact, favoring the creation and reproduction of cultural and social identities, individual and collective; a field for experimenting with relationships with the potential to produce and reproduce ways of being and perceiving life; a propitious place to stimulate the self-esteem of socially excluded groups and suitable for the intersection of different human experiences.