A prática educativa da extensão rural no campo da reforma agrária: aproximações com a educação popular

Abstract

Starting from the context of the struggle for Agrarian Reform and public policies for the countryside, this work proposes to analyze the educational practices of the extension agents of the Technical Advisory and Rural Extension - ATER, based on the reports and experiences lived by the peasants in the process of organizing the family groups from Socorro Settlement, in the city of Areia-PB. This reflection has as its starting point the Popular Education as a possible practice experienced in the countryside. In this way, we realize that the technical assistance and rural extension, from the perspective of Popular Education, have, as a proposal, the objective of promoting autonomy to the families and their empowerment, through the knowledge and use of emancipatory practices, both in the form of individual and collective organization. This reflection is based on some elements that the popular pedagogy of Paulo Freire warns like the dialogue, the popular knowledge, the autonomy, the emancipation and the work, as educational principles that guided this investigation. For this analysis, some theoretical and methodological procedures were used, such as assuming a dialectical approach (FRIGOTTO, 2010), qualitative and exploratory, through which data triangulation was adopted (FLICK, 2009), when addressing a set of procedures such as bibliographic research, documentary research, participant observation, semi-structured interviewing techniques with ATER / ATES agents and the focus group (GATTI, 2005), carried out with five family groups of Socorro Settlement. As expected, we present the production of knowledge of this relationship between peasants’ popular knowledge and the academic knowledge of ATER / ATES agents, thus enhancing the existence of positive and fragile educational practices, which, in part, do not dialogue with principles of Popular Education. Positive experiences were perceived in this research, however, they are barely visible in the local context. Therefore, the study comprehends that the individual and collective paths of this sharing of knowledge, in which peasants are protagonists, need to be shared with the younger generation of the settlement, making them the memory and history of struggle and resistance present in the affirmative perspective of conquest, autonomy, empowerment and emancipation of the family farmers, both the men and women farmers.