Sob a lona da realidade no picadeiro dos direitos humanos, da educação e da (re) existência: limites e possibilidades da formação emancipatória de mulheres privadas de liberdade

Abstract

This master’s research is linked to the Graduate Program in Education (PPGED) of the Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU), within the research line Knowledge and Educational Practices, with support from the Minas Gerais Research Funding Foundation (FAPEMIG). We ground the study in the dialogical relationship between initial and continuing teacher education, prison education, and human rights education, articulating educational provision for women deprived of liberty. We integrate knowledge from the field of fundamental rights and guarantees, understanding education as a human right anchored in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Brazilian Federal Constitution (1988), with human dignity as its central ethical and political axis. By problematizing the hegemonic, sexist, patriarchal, colonial, and punitive discourse that sustains the penal system, we denounce legislative fragilities and the insufficiency of public policies aimed at prison education, particularly in relation to women. From the perspective of Critical Pedagogy, we emphasize the need for transformative and emancipatory educational actions capable of effectively ensuring the right to education in prison contexts. We highlight Youth and Adult Education (EJA) as the most appropriate educational modality for prison education due to its curricular flexibility, inclusive orientation, and emancipatory potential, especially considering population turnover and the heterogeneity of life trajectories and schooling levels among incarcerated individuals. We advocate for a humanizing education committed to integral human development and to the construction of life projects for incarcerated people, particularly women, contributing to the overcoming of symbolic, social, and structural constraints that perpetuate the imprisonment of both body and mind. The general objective of this research is to analyze, based on documentary and bibliographic sources, how prison education is conceived within public policies and within the Pedagogical-Political Projects (PPPs) of Escola Estadual Professor Paulo Freire and Escola Estadual Professor Mário Quintana, seeking to understand their conceptions, foundations, and limits regarding the realization of the right to education and emancipatory education in male and female prison contexts. To this end, we mobilize theoretical and documentary references that support a critical and interdisciplinary analytical framework, grounded in Critical Pedagogy, Prison Education Studies, and Human Rights Education. The study engages in dialogue with Freire (1967, 1993, 2011, 2013), Davis (2017, 2024), Carvalho (2014), Brandão (2007), Brito (2016), Charlot (2002), Foucault (1987, 2022), Libâneo (2018), Varella (2024), and Nóbrega-Therrien and Therrien (2004), among others. We also analyze legal documents such as the Brazilian Criminal Enforcement Law (1984), the National Education Guidelines and Framework Law (1996), and Decree No. 7.626/2011, which regulate prison education policies in Brazil. Methodologically, we adopt an exploratory research design with a qualitative approach, based on bibliographic and documentary analysis. The study is structured through the State of the Question, which brings together national and international academic productions on women’s prison education. We adopt a reflective perspective of the in-between spaces, inspired by Paulo Freire’s critical epistemology, understanding education as a practice of freedom and social transformation. In analyzing legal frameworks and the Pedagogical-Political Projects of Escola Estadual Professor Paulo Freire (PPP/2024) and Escola Estadual Professor Mário Quintana (PPP/2025), institutions operating within the Prison EJA modality in the state of Minas Gerais, we identify formal advances in democratic planning and citizenship promotion, as well as structural limitations that hinder the effective implementation of educational actions aimed at women. Reflecting on women’s prison education thus constitutes a political and ethical act that calls for a rupture with punitive and colonial logics, reaffirming education as an inalienable human right and a pathway to emancipation and social reintegration.