Adult Education in Brazil: Between Systematic and Popular Orientated Educational Models

Adult education in Brazil: between systematic and popular orientated educational models

Paper presented at SCUTREA, 32nd Annual Conference, 2-4 July 2002, University of Stirling

Rute Baquero, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil

Introduction

If Adult Education (AE) assumes a highly important role in the so called industrialized countries, due to rising unemployment and consequently the need to prepare workers for the technological development, in the Brazilian case AE is institutionalized not as a result of the social development, but as a product of social deterioration (Haddad, 1992). In this context, Adult Education (AE) refers to the educational opportunities regarding excluded people. Additionally, it should be stressed that the field of Adult Education (AE) has changed and nowadays it encompasses not only the adult population, but also the young whose age is 15 years or more and who do not attend regular school and have economic and social responsibilities related to older people. This is particularly true in the case of Brazil, where a growing participation of young people can be found in Adult Education programs, characterizing what Brunnel (2001) calls the youthfulness of Adult Education. Due to this situation, most of the literature in Brazil utilizes the expression Young and Adult Education to refer to the area traditionally known as Adult Education.

Adult Education is a field of highly contested interpretations where social actors located at different power positions have postulated diverse educational models, in order to achieve specific kinds of public policies. This paper examines both the scholar models (from the State's initiative), and the popular models (from civil society's initiative), which have been developed in the Adult Education field over the last decades in Brazil. The criteria employed in order to undertake the analysis focus on conceptual and operational dimensions. Insofar as the conceptual dimension is concerned the following indicators were utilized: (a) the meaning of Adult Education; (b) the purpose of the qualification process; (c) the types of competence qualification emphasized; (d) the qualification strategies; (e) the curriculum organization and (f) the type of public policy it underlies.

Regarding the operational dimension, the following indicators were considered: (a) the level or administrative centralization/decentralization, and (b) the setting in which the educational process takes place. The study seeks to evaluate the possibility of deepening the understanding of young and adult education in an approach that privileges the models tension.

Pathways of Young and Adult Education in Brazil

According to Fischer (1992), historically the pathway developed by Adult Education in Brazil goes towards two ways outlined upon different conceptions and practices. On the one hand, in an institutionalising way a set of education actions emerge permeated by theoretical principles that link education to popular organization. On the other hand, in an institutionalised way, there is the structuring of systematic pedagogical practices designed to compensate for the lack of education in an age considered as adequate. In the former case we have what we call popular or consciousness-raising model for adult education; in the second one, we have the systematic or scholar model for adult education (Lovisolo, 1988). In the popular model, educational actions are established from civil society initiatives, whereas in the scholar model initiatives are taken by the State. These models are founded on different conceptions on the field of adult education and, in turn, generate different educational practices.

1 Moll (2001: 78) in her paper ‘Policies for the education of young and adults in Brazil: challenges of contemporaneity’ says the following: There is no way of thinking about policies and, more specifically, about public policies without approaching the field of relationships that have been historically established between the government and the population or between the state sphere and civil society And the author adds to that: ‘historically, we confuse State with government and we are not able to establish (…) continuity with the various educational programs (p. 78). Moll (2001) highlights two different moments in Brazilian education history in the field of young and adult education in the 20th century that show the State/society polarization: in the 50’s and early 60’s, the strong movement by civil society with the development of experiences in popular education by non-governmental organizations, popular associations and church institutions; and, after the military putsch in 1964 and in the 70’s, the total centralization and statization of literacy programs and educational activities for adults by the federal government through MOBRAL (Brazilian Literacy Movement) and supplement education.

Torres (1990: 11), in a critical review on national adult literacy actions in Latin America, also points to ‘… a deep and historical divide between State and civil society … operating in both sides’. In the State’s perspective, the tendency is one of a hegemonic and even monopolizing vision on its role in adult education, one that denies the experience gathered outside the State which has been constructed by non-governmental agencies and popular organizations. From the non-governmental perspective, the predominant tendency was to reproduce a homogeneous vision of the State to which, in a non-historical way, all vices of an anti-popular State are assigned.

What have been the characteristics of young and adult education proposals taking into account these two pathways that demarcate the history in this field of education in Brazil? These two pathways are different both from the conceptual and operational point of view. An analysis, taking into account the proposed criteria, shows that the proposals, according to the popular Young and Adult Education model, conceive the educational process as emancipatory to the extent that it proposes the political consciousness-raising of popular groups and encourages their organization for their participation in a social transformation project. The scholar model of adult education, in turn, proposes, through an education directed to providing a minimum set of systematized knowledge, to develop a compensatory education to those who had no access to school at the ‘appropriate age’ or who have been part of the school dropout process.

According to the popular model, YAE practices aim at contributing to shape social actors in the popular environment, associating education to social change and to mobilization around the solution of problems related to survival and a better quality of life of popular groups (Rivero, 1997). On the other hand, YAE practices that follow the scholar model have as their main goal to enable adults and ‘adult’ young, who have not attended school or who have dropped out, to carry out their formal educational process so that they are able to achieve the cultural and social skills needed to meet demands related to family, the labour market and to the exercise of their rights as citizens.

Under the perspective of the systematic or scholar model of YAE, projects develop their qualification process stressing the ‘instrumentalization’ character of the process. They work on a systematic set of contents and emphasize the idea that a minimum, basic, common and elementary set can and should exist, one that should be learned by each and every citizen. This ‘minimum’ is currently being translated in the Curricular Proposal for the First Segment of Elementary Education, a proposal developed by Educational Action, in cooperation with the Department for Elementary Education of the Ministry of Education in Brazil. This systematic knowledge that is distributed in the educational process would become instruments in the life of individuals. In this sense, in the perspective of the systematic model education would be the distribution of instruments; life would be about using, discarding, innovating or ignoring these instruments (Lovisolo, 1988).

2 This issue is seen differently in YAE projects in the perspective of popular educators who understand that education is an answer to the demands of life or, still, the expression of life itself. In this context, the types of competence qualification in the popular YAE model find no reference either in an official adult and young education program or in the establishment of a ‘common denominator’ in terms of knowledge, mental faculties and moral attributes every citizen should achieve according to the parameters of the dominating social group. Rather, they emerge taking into account the distinct objectives of each project and according to the characteristics of the popular groups they are designed to, without any uniformization programs or materials. Under this perspective, education is seen as a process where the conditions for the development of potentialities inherent in individuals or certain groups are established, thus, it plays a predominantly formative role.

In relation to qualification strategies, the popular model of YAE makes use of active and participatory methodologies directed to the problematization of the social practices of the various social groups it is directed to. Problems are generated by the meaning of knowledge in the context of the life of popular groups and not by syntax. Thus, ‘contents’ are worked on the experiential context of the individuals involved in the formative process whose basic methodological movement are action-reflection-action processes. The qualification strategy found in the scholar model of YAE, in turn, can be described as being predominantly formal, although one can also find in it educational forms or processes that are included in active pedagogies and, particularly, that criticize the formal. However, it should be stressed that while in the popular model of YAE the qualification strategy highlights the process in the formation dynamics, the systematic model of YAE emphasizes the qualification products.

Regarding the organization of the curriculum, the systematic model of YAE, considering its scholar character, establishes a direct relationship with the task of carrying out the contents and curricular levels in order to achieve certifications that can be used in daily life and at work. In opposition to a more rigid curricular structure of the systematic YAE model, there is a more flexible curricular structuring in the popular YAE model. This is a non-segmented proposal, more holistic in nature, that is opposed to the development of a universalist educational practice. According to Lovisolo (1988: 33), in the ‘systematic school’ model there is a strong tendency to perform an educational practice of universal nature, either in terms of its contents or the faculties it intends develop (reasoning, capacity of observation and experimentation, among others). Behind its positions there is a belief in a universal individual, the result of the evolution of reason, whose basic components would be given by illuminist views . Opposite to this vision, the popular model of YAE enhances what individuals have in terms of differences and unique features. Thus the importance of the context in the formative processes of popular education. The YAE models described here are at the service of different types of public policies. Torres, (in Baquero, 1996) in a study on adult education as a public policy, identifies four alternative approaches to adult education taking as parameters the type of social context (political activation and participation or political control with limited participation) and the modes of policy- making in education (from incrementalist perspective or inspired by structuralist critiques): the modernization approach, pragmatic idealism, the pedagogy of the oppressed and the models of popular education and social engineering.

The systematic YAE model is included in the adult education modernization approach that emerges as a strategy of educational policy of incrementalist nature in a social dynamics of political activation and participation. This type of approach considers education in general and adult education in particular as a variable that is closely related to the socio-economic development of a country. Under this perspective, literacy programs and basic education for adults are relevant instruments to take into account, in order to anticipate changes in the socio-psychological domain, in attitudes, values and expectations that are important in the modernization process, taking advanced capitalist societies as a model.

3 The approach of the pedagogy of the oppressed and of popular education models emerge as a strategy of a structuralist-oriented policy in a social context of political activation and citizen participation. The pedagogy of the oppressed is characterized as pedagogy for social transition, defining its educational activity as cultural action for liberation. The development of the education program does not take place in the classroom, but in a cultural circle. It is based upon the pedagogy of the oppressed by Paulo Freire developed in the 60’s in our country that popular education models are structured.

Finally, regarding the operational dimension of Young and Adult Education (YAE) proposals, we should refer to the centralizing character of the administration in the systematizing model and the decentralizing character of decisions and management present in the popular model. Furthermore, it should be pointed out that there is a standardized space for the development of educational processes for YAE in the systematic model and the possibility of multiple and varied spaces for the realization of the popular model of young and adult education – in unions, political parties, community associations among others.

Conclusion

In Brazil, today, we can find the coexistence of different trends and modes of work in the field of young and adult education which have emerged in previous decades and that are being subject to revision today. I would like to point to some of these revisions, some of them already underway and others still to be done.

One feature that is currently present in some YAE (Young and Adult Education) proposals is the ideary of popular education as an action strategy. This occurs particularly in programs developed under the responsibility of municipalities and States governed by left-wing progressive parties (Porto Alegre and Rio Grande do Sul, for example). But it can also be found in programs carried out by the federal government in partnership with higher education institutions and rural social movements (as in the case of Young and Adult Education in the framework of the National Education Program in Land Reform – PRONERA).

This trend obviously has consequences, particularly in the case of federal programs where there is no congruency between the action strategy and the public policy, since from the program standpoint, what is at stake are first social reform proposals rather that social transformations. The intention, in terms of public policy, is to reform and modernize the current capitalist order so that the system is able to organize ‘fairer and more human’ relationships. In this case, what we find is a non-critical transposition of the main characteristics of the popular model to the systematic model of young and adult education.

A revision that still needs to be done so that progress can be made in Young and Adult Education as a field of knowledge and social practice is one that relates to the problematization of the tension between technical-pedagogical aspects (which predominate in the systematic model of YAE) and the political- ideological aspects (which predominate in the popular model of YAE). Additionally, I believe that revisions should be made taking into account the issue of the historicity of YAE actions, placing their objectives and actions in the context of challenges proposed by a contemporary society, with the emergence of new actor and social movements.

These are, in my view, some of the important revisions that should be taken into account in the field of YAE today. Other revisions have to be presented from the productive tension between the systematic and the popular model of YAE approached here. I think that it does not matter how limited the scholar model of adult education might be, since it can function as an important source of social change; in the same way, it does not matter how politically effective the popular model of adult education might be, because it can act as an important source of pedagogical change.

4 References

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