Aos pés da montanha que chora: a história da educação especial de uma escola estadual de Itajubá, sul de Minas Gerais (1988-2015)

Abstract

This study was carried out as part of the Postgraduate Programme in Education at the Federal University of Uberlândia, linked to the line of History and Historiography of Education. This doctoral thesis presents a historical-educational research dedicated to analysing the creation and organization of the Novo Tempo Special Education State School, located in Itajubá, in the south of the state of Minas Gerais. The time frame of the study was 1988 to 2015, as these were the year the school was created and the legal framework for Law 13.146, which reformulates the access and permanence of people with disabilities to education. The object of investigation was chosen for the following reasons: firstly, the uniqueness of the field of History of Education and secondly, the intersectional nature between school institutions: the educational Dom Bosco Institute (later the Horticultural School and Agricultural College of Wenceslau), the Association of Parents and Friends of the Exceptional (APAE) and the Novo Tempo State School of Special Education, all from Itajubá. The thesis is dedicated to analyze the social and political motivations for the creation and organization of the Novo Tempo School in Itajubá, as well as the structural, socio-environmental and human aspects for the community in the city and region. More specifically, it discusses the process of discrimination and exclusion of students and workers in the area; describing the socio-environmental and institutional indicators and analyzing the imbrications and intersectionality in the school space as an arena of social dispute. In this regard, we sought to verify the contributions to the community in structural, political and socio-environmental aspects. The following questions were posed to guide the study: What are the aspects and reasons why Minas Gerais maintains Special Education in these ways? Having made this provocation, this research sought to analyse the Novo Tempo State School of Special Education, taking into account its institutional history, social relations and the subjects involved in this process. To this end, the research rationale was based on the main theoretical-methodological references of historiographical research in the field of School Institutions, under the guidance of studies in this field: Cassani, Ferreira Neto and Santos (2020), Diniz (2012), Foracchi (1982), Hirata (2006), Marx (2012), Sanfelice (2007). In order to establish a dialogue between the social space and the school, we used documentary sources from the school archives, such as enrolment books, founding minutes, records of projects, festivities and civic celebrations, and secretarial books containing the history of teachers and staff. In addition to these, newspapers, regulations and legislation were consulted in other archives. In this way, the results confirmed the initial thesis that the Novo Tempo State School of Special Education, although marginalized geographically and socially at its inception as a makeshift school, has taken on the role of guaranteeing the schooling of people with disabilities, with its recognition described in the changes expressed by the sources over the twenty-seven years researched here.