Summary
School exclusion can occur for different reasons that need to be clarified in the context of educational institutions, regardless of whether they are public or private, in the Brazilian and transnational historical profile, by the influence exerted by systems considered benchmarks in the urban context of Curitiba, where the broad community participation in the development of public policies and monitoring of socio-legal and institutional developments is invoked. Understanding the causes that generate learning deficits in the achievement of knowledge and competencies becomes relevant to the extent that the exercise of tolerance becomes eminent in an increasingly complex society, lacking dialogue and articulations engaged with the educational process as a mechanism to repress social violence in all classes. In the same way, two atypical years of the institutional role of the school in the process of educational formation of our students were followed, considering the failure and approval rates, a greater systemic complacency and a breach of rigor in the classroom system can be perceived. The next stage, that is, 2021, with the return to the hybrid and face-to-face system in 2022. The referrals of clinical cases of school deficit in the Resource Room and the “More Learning” system, which does not configure clinical cases, but evolutionary deficits in the educational process, behave with a small number of students compared to the total number of students enrolled. The percentages of failure express a relative capacity to maximize school resources in the processes of psycho-pedagogical accompaniment, relying on few professionals and facilities.
Key Words: Cognitive deficit. Social exclusion. Socio-legal measures. Social violence. Public policies. Civil emancipation. Social Responsibility.
Introduction
This article is divided in two moments. The first one gravitates around a floating reading of theoretical references and the second one in a practical construct of quantitative and qualitative investigation, making use of the discourse analysis adapted to Bardin’s Methodology, to list the statements of significant subjects, found in the school context, where the author has talked with professional staff, teachers and students, to understand the cause-effect relationship of learning deficit, social insertion, school success or failure in the educational mission with an increasing degree of complex inferences according to the contemporary socio-political and geopolitical panoramas, as the need to understand the relationship between physiological and anatomical impairment of schoolchildren in the definition of their psychomotor development via school performance and the complex network of systemic relationships of the individual and his/her family, and social interaction that influence the standards of educational quality and school performance.
1. Exclusion as a trait of an exclusive and meritocratic society
The uninterrupted multiplication of disorganized voices, among them, those coming from workers, students, housewives, teachers and several other actors, offers us a panorama of diversity of the effectuation of history itself. The mirroring of the global discourse of domination as a political fact seeking to homogenize even the academic discourse, through the echo of these voices, notably after the period of 1964 in Brazil, often silencing that of the proletarian experiences. According to Chauí (p.33-34, 2004), the political practice of populism – the theoretical branch of the bourgeois-democratic revolution – aimed at equalizing the partners, both intellectuals and the working class$^1$, the second social agent being considered an abstraction or else qualified as inorganic and diffuse.
In this sense, the experience of a country marked by military dictatorship, where torture was indiscriminately applied, regardless of age, gender or the moral, physical and psychological situation of those suspected of subversive activities, where children were sacrificed in front of their parents, pregnant women who had their children aborted, wives who suffered to incriminate their husbands, in short, an abundant description of intimidating procedures that had an impact on the history of this country, notwithstanding the abundant examples from other countries, where the dictatorial experience especially overruled social rights (ARNS, p.220, 2009).
Later there was talk of a post-1964 period where the working classes came to find scope for the irremediable legacy of history in intellectual production that accentuated resistance to the blows suffered, even as a strategic dimension (DECCA, p. 35,1981).
Therefore, we can assume an educational model designed under the auspices of a dictatorship that imposed severe limitations on the right of institutional expression, mirroring the didactic-pedagogical orientation and tarnishing the social behaviour of the families themselves with obvious after-effects, elements that were not erased during the subsequent years until the supposed process of Brazilian re-democratization, which leads to an incisive expectation of changes in several public policies aimed at social inclusion, especially supported by the democratization of public services, with public schools as a broad scenario.
The specialization of the educational treatment of the “excluded people” would have a new interpretation in the attempt to diminish the differences through a discourse of homogenizing and inclusive effects, bringing a varied range of new problems for which there was not enough qualified manpower to face the difficulties brought into the school space, like emotional and cognitive deficits. The professionalization of students was enhanced, however, in universities, to promote the adjustment and adaptation of students in spaces known as “resource rooms”, where essentially the transparency of a given pathology would make the students, subjects of law, beneficiaries of services provided by a limited number of professionals, upon explicit information from parents and/or guardians, about their citizen condition.
The fact is that the dynamics of a child’s intellectual development can reach different degrees and the disproportionality of professionals and number of cases has become a limiting factor in the quality of such services. The destabilization of social classes leads to systemic incursions between the public and the private when the productive assumptions, such as reliability, quality, costs, flexibility and speed, start to stress social inequality in order to better qualify the individual within the limits of his possibilities, for a citizen life, based on the development of competencies. Although the subject does not remain in national boundaries and it shall be extended to several different societies, in accordance with the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959).$^2$
2. Exclusionary disorders and precedents in psychological and educational development
Special education underwent profound changes during the 20th century, mainly concerned about social exclusion as well as all kinds of violence in the familiar, scholar, and community relationships.
Driven by social movements that claimed more equality among all citizens and the overcoming of any kind of discrimination, it was gradually incorporated into the regular education system and sought formulas to facilitate the integration of students with disabilities (COOL, p.15, 2004).
When considering learning disorders, which have worried teaching professionals the most, they refer to the high dropout and failure rates that have been recorded in municipal and state schools, as well as the large number of children who have sought psycho-pedagogical treatment, motivated by learning difficulties (MORAIS, p.23, 2006).
3. Integration of the disabled child into the school discourse
It is of course an important observation to conceive of what is expressed in the classroom as a form of opposition to change, that is, an expectation of an adultized mental restructuring.
In this sense, warns (RONCIN, p.175) that… despite our desire and our ability to question ourselves, we remain prisoners of our education, that is, of the modes of relationship through which we build our personality, and much more… we have difficulty perceiving the properties of children when they live the class situation autonomously, to conclude that “we are prisoners of verbal language”. The mentioned author reiterates that if the teacher is intolerant, it is because the general context in which he/she performs his/her function is intolerant. The school system that prescribes for him/her the programs and the ways to apply them, the evaluations and the knowledge controls…being himself/herself evaluated and controlled by the hierarchy, he/she is obliged, in order to be recognized, his/her person and his/her role, to respond to what is expected of him/her. This does not mean that he/she does not wish to help the disabled child. But this desire, real in most people, is deformed by the understanding of the child’s learning, that is, by the organic conception of the school. (RONCIN, p.112).
4. The permeability of violence in relationship circuits
It is essential to reinforce lessons of appropriate social coexistence in the school context in order to exercise tolerance, understanding, and harmony in a healthy environment suitable for learning conditions. Fortunately, the time when having a person with a disability in the family represented a stigma is long gone. In fact, in centuries before and up to the beginning of the 20th century, disabilities were attributed to organic causes generated in the family by some kind of moral degeneration in some of its members. This terrible attribution was, in the past, a source of shame and guilt for many families and, even today, many parents feel extremely guilty because, deep down, they believe that the birth of a child with a disability means some kind of punishment. (COLL, p.331-332,2004).
5. The timeline in the construction of citizenship
As a new perspective of social rights, transindividual rights are focusing the idea, that it is not the public neither the private territories individually overviewed, that can draw up new perspectives of social responsibility, but mainly the fusion of both, as a hybrid territory of claimed rights, democracy and human transnational cooperation.
As for social rights in Brazil, it is commented that the debates around citizenship, as we understand it today, emerged within the national states, under the impact of the social transformations introduced by capitalism. The presence in the political scene of workers, in turn, played a central role in the realization of broader mechanisms of participation in public life and in the search for a fairer and more equal division of wealth for all (PINSKI, p. 469, 2012).
6. Public policies and social construction
The regulation of the State in the line of educational inclusion and opportunities for all, leaves important precedents and gaps to the extent that one notices the strengthening of the third sector in informal organizations that can provide inclusive management for young people and adults who have had the so-called limitations of cognitive, psychic, or motor nature observed and addressed with relative effectiveness.
Public policies are necessarily executed by the State. Although some adjustments may allow the production of collective goods through planning and organization in time and space, from the performance of non-governmental organizations, we believe that the concept of public order requires the presence and performance of the State to give them the sense of inclusion and not exclusivity of its results (in Gonçalves, Alcindo, op cit CAMPELLO; BENINE, p. 88). In SMANIO; BERTOLIN. Law and public policies in Brazil. São Paulo, Atlas, 2013.
7. Socio-legal measures on the invocation of the state’s jurisdictional guardianship in the protection of the diffuse rights of schoolchildren
The most forceful critique of political economy consists precisely in showing that, despite Greco-Roman and liberal claims of separation between the private sphere of property and the public sphere of power, politics has never managed to realize the difference between the two. Nor could it. Political power has always been the legal and juridical way in which the economically dominant class of a society maintained its dominance over the other social classes. The polis, the civitas, the state could never separate the private power of the economically dominant and the public or political power. The legal and juridical apparatus only conceals the essential: that political power exists as the power of the economically powerful, to serve their interests and privileges and guarantee their social domination. Divided between owners and non-owners (poor free workers, scribes, serfs), societies have never been communities of equals, and have never allowed political power to be shared with non-owners. Marx asks: What is the civil society those liberal economists and political theorists talk about? And he answers: it is not the manifestation of a rational natural order, nor the conflicting agglomeration of individuals, families, groups and corporations, whose antagonistic interests will be reconciled by the social contract, through which the regulatory and ordering action of the state would be instituted as the expression of the general interest and will. He concludes his reflection by stating that civil society is the process of constitution and reposition of the material conditions of economic production through which the social classes are engendered: the private owners of the means of production and the workers or non-owners, who sell their labour force as merchandise subject to the law of supply and demand in the labour market reinforcing the idea that… civil society is not an agglomeration of individuals but a social division of classes and is realized as class struggle, in which the State emerges to serve the interests of one of the social classes (CHAUÍ, 382-383, 2004).
8. Presentation and discussion of data collected in a school unit (Natália Reginato Pubic State School) significant in the urban social context of Regional Cajuru, Curitiba, Paraná. A proposal for direct observation of data in the pandemic transition period (SARS-COVID) 2019-2020.
By observing the reports issued by the Department of Education of the State of Paraná, regarding school performance in the most critical years of the beginning of the millennium (2019-2020), it was possible for the researcher to conclude that, according to the percentages that point to the occurrence of failures, the observation has come across the reality of the school unit in focus, where the researcher performs his duties as a professor, concluding that in 2019, the year before the pandemic, an observed proportion of 357 approved students and 115 students who failed in a percentage of 24.36% of the total number of students enrolled in basic education was registered. In 2020, in basic education, a proportion of 329 approved students and 8 failed students, which means a percentage of 1.83%. Regarding High School, a percentage of 1.36%, with 30 students approved against 191 who did not. In this sense, there are two paths parallel to this condition of the student’s curricular sequence. Whenever the student comes to the school context with a medical report that conforms to his/her health condition (CID – International Disease Code) a job performed by a pedagogue with qualification in Special Education, who has a capacity of 20 students per school period, will be developed considering the possibility of working individually or in a group, not in the context of the Resource Room. However, sometimes, while the family is aware of the facts related to the social reality of the student, it is observed that for a matter of convenience, the background of the minor is omitted, counting on contradictory arguments such as the possibility of suffering psychological pressure from school community, bullying, being this information kept secret.
Eventually, the structure of the organization does not charge on demand for questions of contributory capacity, referrals can be made from time to time for units other than the school system, therefore, the curricular objectives are maintained, with the normal frequency of the student in the classroom, as specific management of the limitations demonstrated by the student, not the work exercise of the school professional task force. The basis of Brazilian System is in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Children’s Rights, ands UNESCO aims, EFA, Education for all.
In an interview with the teacher responsible for the program PMA$^3$ ( Learning More Program), in the school context (trained and in practice since 2020), she makes reservations about the need to individualize or not the insertion of the young person in the intended work. The focus is dynamics that involve, in addition to the skills provided in the curriculum, others such as play therapy, interactive media, music therapy, arts, sciences, which are based on the learner’s interaction with the daily life of their relationships. The availability of appropriate space for the development of the program constitutes an organizational limitation in the performance of the professional’s work planning, who occupies alternative spaces to execute her plans. The program includes two levels classified according to the difficulty presented by the student, regardless of assumptions linked to gender, but this is a parent’s option, and there may be a break in continuity of work if the student evades. A second point to be noted is that students who do not correspond to the objectives of the project are replaced by others who are interested in the educational practices administered by the professional, with a degree in Arts and Portuguese Language, with specific training for the program. The same professional questions the fact that the duration of these levels varies from 15 to 20 days, considering the focus to be given to each student, which inspires review.
In an interview with the director of the educational establishment elected as an observation unit, (traditional establishment of the capital of Paraná) elected by the student community of this neighbourhood, (Management – 2021-2025), she reports being fully aware of the facts, highlighting for the statistical study carried out , the consideration of the psychological factor in the socio-educational context, due to the multiple sequelae left by the observed pandemic trail, especially in the resumption of content from other series, since the process of acquiring knowledge inspires a spiral analysis of the basic objectives of education, the which greatly hinders the effectiveness of the strategies adopted until then by the current educational system, warning that the ‘SE LIGA’ Project (special monitoring of missed and re-opportunized school evaluations) of rescuing students poorly adapted to the new “online” educational version, hybrid until the return to face-to-face classes, which has given rise to protective measures in the sense of unconditionally promoting opportunities for progress in school performance, even if in an emergency and followed by numerous difficulties such as digital exclusion, the current social and economic crisis, family and personal dramas, in the same way, of teachers and pedagogues responsible for school management in a broad sense, which constitutes a serious challenge to their direction.
Conclusion
Research in the educational territory has related school education and citizenship in an incomplete way, when it positions individuals and social reference groups, in their communities, disregarding the social vulnerability of children and adolescents and the degree of interaction and exposure to which they are subordinated, as well as the duality of the educational task both in social relationships and in the school environment. Hence perhaps the silence about pre-existing pathologies on the part of parents and/or guardians for fear of the forms of bullying.
The conflicts observed at school call for extended studies that point out the reasons why the observable consequences, such as dropout, failure in school records, are leading to a structural insufficiency resulting from the recurrence of institutional services of psycho-pedagogical emphasis, especially in the understanding of their causes. The National Law has to be effective, when it is signed by the President, the absolute necessity to give psychological support for students in any circumstances, mainly the medical cases, like, autism, and many other psychopathologies. Sometimes they are hardly observed by teachers and professors, or, not treated with the proper care.$^4$
As Norberto Bobbio well teaches, …there was an overcoming of expectations around a State of Law for a State of Citizens, governed no longer by an absolute power, but by a Bill of Rights, from which a new era was opening for humanity – an Age of Rights (in PINSKY, 2012, p.129).
In this sense, research on inclusive education and management of specific problems, such as autism spectrums, obsessive compulsive disorders, aggressive and reluctant behaviour towards the goals of education, dyslexia, dyslalia, and dysorthography in the territory of “should be”, deserve redoubled attention for the millennium perspectives, projecting expectations of sustainability and quality of life, for the generations that dynamically reconfigure themselves in the perspective of social rights. Emotional problems, and transitional educational system – vertical and horizontal educational nets – have raised up during the pandemic period which is also meaningful in terms of strategies to overcome challenges of the millennium.
End notes
- The emancipation of the oppressed class is the vital condition of the whole society founded on class antagonism; the emancipation of the oppressed class therefore necessarily implies the creation of a new society. In order for the oppressed class to liberate itself, it is necessary that the productive forces already acquired, and the prevailing social relations cannot continue to exist alongside one another. Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive force is the revolutionary class itself. There is no political movement that is not also social. (CHAUÍ, 2004, p. 52, op.cit. A Miséria da Filosofia, São Paulo, Ática, 1976, p. 165-168).
- Principle 7 – The child is entitled to receive education, which shall be free and compulsory, at least in the elementary stages. He shall be given an education which will promote his general culture and enable him, on a basis of equal opportunity, to develop his abilities, his individual judgement, and his sense of moral and social responsibility, and to become a useful member of society. Evaluable at: <https://archive.crin.org/en/library/legal-database/un-declaration-rights-child-1959.html> Date: 01.05.2022.
- (PMA) – Programa mais aprendizagem. Evaluable at: <https://www.educacao.pr.gov.br/Noticia/Dois-mil-professores-participam-de-formacao-do-Programa-Mais-Aprendizagem> Access: 17/05/2022.
- Compulsory Responsibility of the State to provide Psychological Support in Public Schools – Evaluable at: <http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2019-2022/2019/lei/L13935.html>Access: 010.05.2022.
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- Compulsory Responsibility of the State to provide Psychological Support in Public Schools – Evaluable at: <http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2019-2022/2019/lei/L13935.html >
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