School closures in the countryside and its returns in the countryside social reproduction

an analysis from the city of Moita Bonita/SE/Brazil

Abstract

The Brazilian countryside is historically marked by structural contradictions. In the 1990s, due to pressure from social movements fighting for land, especially the Landless Rural Workers Movement, the debate on education from/to the countryside intensified. On the one hand, Agribusiness sought to lead these demands of social movements to form the necessary frameworks to manage technological advances aimed at their reproduction. On the other hand, rural education has advanced to the point of becoming public policy. However, parallel to the advances, it was observed, from the intensification of neoliberalism in Brazil, the setback, with the closing of these schools. In view of the above, the objective of this article is to discuss the closing of schools in the countryside and its consequences for peasant reproduction, taking the city of Moita Bonita - SE as a reference. The research, of a qualitative-quantitative nature, included data collection with official agencies and semi-structured interviews with focus groups. The data were analyzed in the light of historical-dialectical materialism and pointed as conclusions the understanding of the closing of schools in the countryside as an expression of the mode of sociability of capital, which seeks to deny the subjects and their places, affirming its systemic logic of reproduction.