A gestão escolar democrática do MST inserida na educação pública estadual de Minas Gerais: a experiência da Escola Eduardo Galeano (Campo do Meio/MG)

Abstract

The education as it has been practiced within the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST (Movement of the Landless Rural Workers) differs in many aspects from the regular education presented in the majority of the public schools in Brazil. Although the MST has a goal to make school management democratic and participatory, often their schools must adapt to the bureaucratic models of the Municipalities or States. The Eduardo Galeano school, in Campo do Meio (MG), was founded by MST and was a spreader of its principles, but has been tied to the Secretary of Education of the State of Minas Gerais (Secretaria de Ensino de Minas Gerais – SEE) and the José Mesquita Netto State School – located in that town, which presented particularities to be understood such as political divergence and the lack of interest from the urban school community to contribute with a Project born from the MST. This dissertation targets the investigation of such management practiced in this school community, identifying the possibilities (opportunities?) of public and democratic management in the process of developing the school, in the identity of struggle as an important factor in the decision making, in the division of tasks and the collective organisation of the Movement. The research took place through semistructured interviews, documental analysis of the school and follow through of the school’s day to day and the movement itself during its working period and after its closure. As a result, it was understood that the process of creation of the school was entagled to a local demand for rural laborers and their children who wished to study, but were too far from the schoolplace. Furthermore, the school as a teaching stablishment represented a space of formation of militants aware of the political function of the movement. The educational branch of MST, as a managerial organ paralel to the direction, had significant responsability over the pedagogic adminstration of the field school and achieved success in enveloping the school community through values as cooperation and engagement, which favored the implementation of its management mode.