Conselhos municipais de educação: cogestão municipal e controle social do direito à educação norte-mineira

Abstract

The Municipal Councils of Education (MCEs), created in the 1990s, under a liberal representative configuration of Democracy, have as their primary role to regulate education public policies in municipalities, in defense of the constitutional right to education. As a co-managing body, it is placed in the disputes for power and command in a neoliberal capitalist society, in which the State is primarily at the service of the hegemonic social class that owns the means of production. Constituted by individuals who produce their material and symbolic life in the daily life of society, whose scenarios of correlations of forces are mediated, perhaps determined, by the bourgeois-conservative model of Democracy, the outline themselves differently. In this scenario, this study asks: has the Social Control function of the right to education with socially and politically referenced quality subsidized the actions of Municipal Education Councils? The objective was to analyze the contents and forms of in the performance of their primary function of controlling policies for the guarantee of the constitutional right to education. Also, discuss the process of creating collegiate forums in Brazil, from the struggles filed by social movements; apprehend the organization, structure and foundations of the Brazilian Boards of Education; interpret the theoretical bases of Social Control and question the Municipal Councils about their performance as a co-management body of education. The delimited space is the three largest municipalities in the north of Minas Gerais - population and enrollment in Basic Education -, in the period from 2011 to 2015. Through dialectics, with both a qualitative and quantitative approach, the literature review dwelt on works that have contributed to the theme and its correspondents: Popular Sovereignty, Democracy, Participation, Citizenship and Social Control. Among them, we highlight studies by Lima (2001; 2009; 2010; 2017), Cury (2001; 2002; 2006), Gohn (2000; 2008; 2011) and Saviani (2008a; 2008b). The documentary research brought the lines and subtext of the minutes of meetings of the Municipal Councils, as well as the laws of creation and regulations, in order to understand the dynamics and the relationships they establish internally and externally with government and civil society agencies. In the field research, interviews with counselors gave voice to those who produce the daily life of the Councils, showing the struggles, disputes and actions for the right to education. Results indicate that the MCEs are not configured as co-managing bodies of education, since they are tied by bureaucratic practices, disarticulated with the realities that surround the public schools in the municipalities; the agendas in dispute are permeated by denunciation; there is no evidence of positive results from the forwarding that they carry out; civil society has little access to them as a collegiate forum of education; the counselors do not have technical training for the exercise of their functions and are neglected, most of the time, by the Education Departments. Thus, they are configured as Cabinet Councils whose role of Social Control of socially and politically referenced quality education is not effective in practice. They are characterized, therefore, as pro-forma mechanisms for the maintenance of social inequalities in a capitalist society.