Direitos Humanos e Educação: uma análise curricular em três esferas da administração pública brasileira

Abstract

This dissertation, which is linked to the research axis "Educational Foundations and Practice" of the Graduate Programme in Education of the Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro (PPGE-UFTM) proposes to develop a curricular analysis on the interaction between Human Rights and Education. With the advent of the 1988 Constitution in Brazil, the right to education gained new contours; such a prerogative henceforth contemplated not only a high-quality public school system but also the view of education as a tool to achieve other human rights. If before the promulgation of the Citizen Constitution, the educational system had been established within a market-based logic alone, offering student only the acquisition of selected contents, the new conception of education founded on human rights attempts to broaden students’ horizons. Educational curricula are situated in a specific time and space and are connected to existing patterns of power and cultural capital. Based on this notion, this exploratory research aims to verify if human rights have, indeed, been contemplated in Brazilian curricula at the level of Ensino Fundamental II (6th to 9th year) in three stances of administrative reach (that is, the federal, state and municipal levels). To achieve this, respectively, three curricular documents are used: the Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC); the Currículo Referência de Minas Gerais (Reference Curriculum of Minas Gerais) and the Matrizes Curriculares Municipais de Uberaba (Municipal Curriculum of Uberaba). The analysis indicates that there are textual occurrences regarding human rights in the researched documents, although a large part of these are superficial mentions, imbued within the descriptive texts of abilities, according to the learning model that the BNCC espouses. Hence, though we have quantitative results which corroborate the presence of this theme, there is little of substance in qualitative terms. This lack is also expressed in the fact that the texts do not include basic and visible aspects of representation, inclusion and recognition of the diversity which exists in the school community, including through an underrepresentation of the themes of gender diversity, diverse sexuality and the inclusion of people with disabilities (PcD, in Portuguese). Therefore, the presence of human rights in the curricular documents exists, but not in a way which legitimises and reinforces some elementary principles of the Brazilian education system, such as the equality of conditions and pluralism that the Constitution foresees and also the promotion of diversity and the formulation of a diversified section in the curriculum, in the terms presented by the Lei de Diretrizes e Bases (LDB) of 1996.