Políticas educacionais para a educação de jovens e adultos e geografia: o caso do Projeto EJA TEC em goiás

Abstract

The research presented here addresses the historical difficulties faced by Youth and Adult Education (EJA) and its marginalization in Brazilian public education policies. EJA aims to serve a diverse audience composed of adolescents, young people, adults, and the elderly who did not complete basic education at the usual time, often due to early entry into the labor market, while having the constitutional right to do so according to the Federal Constitution of Brazil and the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (Law 9394/1996). Under the argument of democratizing access to this educational modality for students unable to attend in-person school, in March 2019, SEDUC-GO implemented the EJA TEC Project (EJA EaD), initially targeting the third stage and later expanding to the second stage. This project is based on the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) and is divided into four areas of knowledge, with only one teacher/mediator per area, raising significant concerns about the initial and ongoing training of teachers for this model. Geography, diluted within the Applied Human and Social Sciences area, alongside other sciences in this field, has lost its status as a discipline or curricular component, thereby undermining students’ critical and reflective formation. In this context, the general objective of this work is to understand the implementation process of the EJA TEC Project in Goiás (second semester of 2019), intended for the Third Stage (High School) in the distance learning modality, and how geographical content is proposed within the Human Sciences area. To achieve this understanding, specific steps (called specific objectives) were defined, namely: to understand how the process of drafting and approving the current LDB occurred under the advancement of neoliberal policies in Brazil and their implications for Basic Education in the country, and consequently for EJA; to investigate whether the functions of reparative, equalizing, and qualifying education, according to federal norms for the modality, are fulfilled by the EJA TEC project implemented in the second semester in Goiás hub schools; to identify how the National Common Curricular Base and the New High School influenced the creation of the EJA TEC Project as well as its curricular structure by areas of knowledge; to characterize the legal bases that allowed the creation of the EJA TEC project, its curricular and pedagogical characteristics, and the discrepancies between what was planned and the concrete reality; to analyze and compare the geographical content outlined in the EJA TEC project and in in-person EJA for the third stage, noting points of convergence and divergence between them. The justification for this research lies in the fact that the researcher has worked in this modality for over two decades, experiencing the challenges and precariousness of EJA and the discontinuity of its projects and programs. This is a qualitative, exploratory research whose primary sources were bibliographical and documentary references. With this study, the aim is to bring visibility to EJA and the teaching of Geography offered within it, thereby contributing to reflections on the real objectives of education being practiced for those whose rights were previously denied or unmet.