A educação do campo como possibilidade de efetivação da educação ambiental: uma experiência de intervenção na Escola Municipal Rui Barbosa no assentamento Palmeiral - Vietnã, Esperantinópolis –MA

Abstract

The study aims to understand how the Rui Barbosa Municipal School has been working on environmental issues and the main elements causing environmental devastation in the Palmeiral-Vietnã Settlement, in the municipality of Esperantinópolis - MA, as well as the conflicts over land ownership in the Middle-Mearim and the fight for the right to public policies, among them, the Field Education in its pedagogical actions in relation to the school environment and the settlement. In this context, it is understood that the predatory actions of nature have intensified in the countryside, mainly with the monoculture of agribusiness, directly affecting thousands of peasant families who live off family production, especially in the last century. In order to understand how these relations and contradictions are established in the countryside, it was felt necessary to understand the role of peasant social movements in the Maranhão mid-Mearim and, particularly, the work developed by the Rui Barbosa Municipal School, in the Palmeiral-Vietnã settlement project. In addition, it was sought in the context of the theme discussed, to bring the discussion on education in the field as an alternative for the development of a work more focused on the reality of the settlement. To this end, as a methodological journey, in addition to the study of bibliographic references addressing themes related to the struggle for land, Social Movements of the Field, Field Education and Environment, field work was carried out, emphasizing semi-structured interviews with the teaching staff, school students, community and union leaders and municipal education and environment managers. Thus, the serious environmental crisis within the settlement, caused by the predatory action of human beings over the years, was verified. In order to mobilize the school community towards the construction of alternatives for the containment of human activities related to aggressions against local biodiversity, the research presented as a proposal for intervention from the collective construction of a nursery of seedlings for reforestation and fruit trees that culminated in the recovery of a degraded area on the banks of the Mearim River, within the settlement and the distribution of fruit trees in the communities covered by the school, as well as a space for educational training of the school community in relation to the settlement. From the collective reflection of the experience, those involved in the process could understand the importance of the school in bringing the discussion of the local reality as a guiding theme to be worked on in the classroom. In this sense, Educação do Campo is characterized as an alternative of social inclusion of peasants in the search for systematic knowledge capable of training critical citizens in conditions to intervene and transform their social reality.