História da política de educação pré-escolar no Brasil de 1964 a 1993 : entre o texto e o discurso

Abstract

We conducted this research through the exercise of educational historiography to approach the action of policy makers concerning the education of young children in Brazil. Our purpose was to assimilate, comprehend and analyze the movement that fostered the appropriation of pedagogical ideas - by highlighting the action or the “voice” of the policy makers - when analyzing the movement that constituted the official discourses used to address the care of children under six years of age in Brazil from 1964 to 1993. As a theoretical/methodological approach, we pursuit the perspective of demythologization, as described by Mark Depaepe, in addition to the police cycle, the Stephen Ball´s interpretative reading. Following this intent, we analyzed documents produced by the Brazilian Federal Government in the aforementioned educational field. Besides these, primary sources were used, such as event reports, internal correspondence, meeting minutes, as well as several texts in the archives of the Coordenação de Educação Infantil. In this sense, our historical reading emphasized the official managements, as we revealed a piece of the Coordenação de Educação Pré-Escolar backstage, in other words, internal and external drives of policy makers, in the vicinity of the official publications or the participations in events. Therefore, because we started the analysis in 1964, it was possible to go through the trajectory of policy by the agency of Vital Didonet and his team underlining the first moving in 1974, the year of the inception of activities of the Ministry of Education and Culture concerning the young children and its discursive alteration in the beginning of 1980´s, posteriorly intense criticism from the researchers to the Compensatory Education approach. Likewise, we stand out the activities of these agents since 1985 for the Campanha Nacional Criança e Constituinte; since 1986, with the implementation of Programa Municipal de Educação Pré-Escolar; since 1992, with the document “Política de Educação Infantil: proposta”. In this route, it was possible to perceive the strategies of control as established within official discourse, through the construction of the text, that allowed the following-up of actions, the convenient space of political maneuvering, the creative and inventive tone in which needs and contextual demands were articulated, as well as the alternative to appropriate concepts and pedagogical ideas. With the outcome of the analyses, the survey results revealed that the agents, at the same time as they concentrate on the pressures (carried out by academics, international organizations, politicians, private initiative), they sought to maintain their place of power, in other words, their relevance to the context of greater influence, the federal government. Beyond that, we revealed the continuum between political discourse and its practical execution. Our entire intent helped in understanding how the construction of the discourse of children – subject to rights – became justifiable, or of their achievement of citizenship, since the occurrence of the Federal Constitution of 1988. In the face of built understandings, as revealed by actions of what was officially publicized, the possibility of surfacing the place of young children, between text and discourse, and in contrast to what has been offered to them in matters of educational attendance in Brazil.