Escola da Terra Program in São Paulo: continuing education of rural teachers

Abstract

The Escola da Terra Program is a public policy for rural education created in 2013 during the first term of President Dilma Rousseff, coordinated by the Continued Secretariat for Literacy, Diversity and Inclusion (SECADI) of the Ministry of Education (MEC) in partnership with municipalities, states and federal public universities. It is one of the actions of the National Rural Education Program (PRONACAMPO) and aims to improve the provision of basic and higher education to rural populations. In the state of São Paulo, the Escola da Terra program was carried out by the Federal University of São Carlos, starting in 2017, the year in which we offered the first training for teachers of rural schools in São Paulo. In this text I present the experience of UFSCar with Escola da Terra, its pedagogical organization and the pedagogical concept adopted for the formation of teachers, the Critical Historical Pedagogy. It is concluded that collective mobilization in defense of education and rural education, specifically, is even more necessary to guarantee and maintain the right to education and, for that, we also need a strong pedagogical theory, which opposes the theories hegemonic theories that deprive the school of meaning and the teachers of intellectual autonomy to carry out their work.