FLOW CORRECTION POLICY AND ADOLESCENTS’ SCHOOLING: AN EDUCATIONAL POLICY ANALYSIS

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes a flow correction educational program, aimed at teenagers in the final years of elementary school developed by the State of Acre in partnership with the Roberto Marinho Foundation. From a qualitative approach, the research had based on the assumptions of Historical-Cultural Psychology. The empirical field was the Cruzeiro do Sul city in the Acre state and the data were produced through document analysis and semi-structured interviews. Seven professionals participated in the study: one coordinator, two advisors and three teachers. The program has a methodology, which is highly valued by the professionals involved, called “Telessala” that has developed from videos, printed materials and “Unidocente” teachers. The conception of education that underpins the project comprises the detached development of learning, disregarding the social constitution of the psyche. In this logic, learning and development have considered dependent on personal effort, contributing to the maintenance of prejudice against students with trajectories marked by the denial of the right to learning.

Keywords:
adolescence; learning; Historical-cultural psychology

RESUMO

O trabalho analisa um programa educacional de correção de fluxo, destinado a adolescentes dos anos finais do ensino fundamental desenvolvido pelo Estado do Acre em parceria com a Fundação Roberto Marinho. De abordagem qualitativa, a pesquisa fundamentou-se nos pressupostos da Psicologia Histórico-Cultural. O campo empírico foi o município de Cruzeiro do Sul/Acre e os dados foram produzidos por meio de análise de documentos e entrevistas semiestruturadas. Participaram do estudo sete profissionais: uma coordenadora, duas assessoras e três professoras. O programa possui uma metodologia, que é bastante valorizada pelas profissionais envolvidas, denominada “Telessala”, desenvolvida a partir de vídeos, materiais impressos e professores unidocentes. A concepção de educação que sustenta o projeto compreende o desenvolvimento desvinculado da aprendizagem, desconsiderando a constituição social do psiquismo. Nessa lógica, aprendizagem e desenvolvimento são considerados dependentes do esforço pessoal, contribuindo para a manutenção de preconceitos contra os estudantes com trajetórias marcadas pela negação do direito à aprendizagem.

Palavras-chave:
adolescência; aprendizagem; Psicologia histórico-cultural

RESUMEN

En el estudio se analiza un programa educacional de corrección de flujo, destinado a adolescentes de los cursos finales de la enseñanza básica desarrollado por el Estado de Acre en asociación con la Fundación Roberto Marinho. De abordaje cualitativo, la investigación se fundamentó en los presupuestos de la Psicología Histórico-Cultural. El campo empírico fue el municipio de Cruzeiro do Sul/Acre y los datos fueron producidos por intermedio de análisis de documentos y entrevistas semiestructuradas. Participaron del estudio siete profesionales: una coordinadora, dos asesoras y tres profesoras. El programa posee una metodología, que es bastante valorada por las profesionales involucradas, denominada tele-clase, desarrollada a partir de vídeos, materiales impresos y profesores unidocentes. La concepción de educación que sustenta el proyecto comprende el desarrollo desvinculado del aprendizaje, desconsiderando la constitución social del psiquismo. En esa lógica, aprendizaje y desarrollo son considerados dependientes del esfuerzo personal, contribuyendo a la manutención de preconceptos contra los estudiantes con trayectorias marcadas por la negación del derecho al aprendizaje.

Palabras clave:
adolescencia; aprendizaje; Psicología histórico-cultural

INTRODUCTION

The programs for accelerating learning have been constituted, mainly since the 1990s, in one of the main policies for correcting the flow and facing school failure in Brazil (Patto, 1999). These programs have different denominations and formats and, in partnership with private companies, they were implemented in several states and municipalities with the objective of correcting the age-year distortion indexes in elementary school, mainly in the final years, whose total distortion index in scope national level is still 25.9%, according to the 2017 School Census of the National Institute of Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (INEP) (2017).

In the State of Acre, a program of this nature, called Poronga, has been in operation since 2002, which, in partnership with the Roberto Marinho Foundation, serves students in the final years of elementary school aged at least 13 and who are two years or older delay in the schooling process. It is proposed to teach, in two years, the content related to the four years of the second cycle of elementary education.

For the analysis undertaken here, we used the theoretical contribution of Historical-Cultural Psychology, which has contributed significantly to the study of educational policies. This theory defends the role of schooling as a guarantee of access to systematized knowledge for all students, since the process appropriation of knowledge culturally produced by humanity is an essential condition for the qualitative development of higher psychological functions. Considering that in Vygotskian theory, learning should be a promoter of development, scientific knowledge has an essential role in psychic development and for that, opportunities and conditions are needed to appropriate them in school.

Based on the analysis of the official documents that establish the objectives and rules of operation of the program and through interviews with the teachers who work on it, we will discuss the objectives and the functioning of the referred program, with the aim of discussing the possibilities and limits of this type policy on ensuring access to knowledge for teenage students.

Historical-cultural psychology and schooling of adolescents

From the perspective of historical-cultural psychology, based on Historical-Dialectic Materialism, the school educational process occurs in the concrete materiality of reality, understanding it as being historical and marked by contradictions inherent to capitalist society. In this way, the legal documents that guide educational policies and the consequent educational practices, as they are the result of human action, carry with them concepts of reality and the formation of subjects.

For historical-cultural psychology, the subject is social, whose subjectivity is constituted in the relationship with objectivity, through the mediation of work. Therefore, the student in his schooling process is not unaware of the materiality that constitutes him and the real conditions for the development of generic human potentialities. As a social being, each individual carries the possibility of developing what has been produced historically by humanity. However, this development depends on the conditions that promote it. The historicity category allows the explanation “... social reality is an integral result of human interactivity throughout the historical process and not of natural or supernatural forces. This also implies demonstrating the character of the totality of the social being” (Tonet, 2013, p. 68).

Similarly, the process of human development in adolescence goes beyond naturalizing and biologizing explanations, as its constitution takes place in the midst of a social and historical process, which makes it possible to “... understand that adolescence is not a linear phenomenon, based on in biological body changes, but a dynamic process that can take place in different ways, according to the context in which it is inserted” (Leal & Facci, 2014, p. 22).

However, the conception of adolescence as a troubled and difficult to deal with phase that contributes to the creation “… of a set of ideas and concepts that dictate not only the behavior of adolescents, but also of adults towards them, is still prevalent.” (Leal, 2016, p. 21). Such mythicized concepts also interfere in the relationship between teacher and student in the schooling process, because objectivity is subjectify by action and in the relationship with social and historical reality. In other words, “... the social being is a unit composed of two poles: the individual pole and the generic pole. Neither has an ontological precedence over the other”. (Tonet, 2013, p. 91).

This perspective also explains the development of higher psychological functions that are significantly transformed by the development of conceptual thinking, typical of adolescence, allowing “... the individual to understand reality in its nexuses and relationships, as well as the formation of a conception of the world and of oneself” (Leal, 2016, p. 24).

For Vygotsky (2012), the appearance of new functions, such as processes that involve selection, categorical perception, elaborated classification, as well as the formation of logical nexus that include the formation of concepts, judgments, critical thinking, and greater capacity for employing conscious and logical thinking characterizes thinking at this stage of development. As a dialectical process, in the new characteristics of development at this age, not all experiences and learning that occurred during development are without effect. Therefore, “... the typical signs of growing mental development need to be sought not only in the interests and new demands, but also in the depth and expansion of the old ones, in their range, in the full range of vital interests” (Vygotsky, 2012, p. 51).

It is the rupture and extinction of old interests and the process of biological maturation that will allow the restructuring of the interests of adolescence, marked by the formation of concepts that qualify their intellectual development. The new capacities of this level of thinking, such as complex syntheses, are due to not only biological maturation, but largely to social life, cultural development opportunities and work activity (Leal, 2016).

Also through thinking in concept, we develop the capacity to understand ourselves and the reality where we are inserted, “... because it is the concept that can reveal the links between facts and the phenomena of reality, allowing to know the laws that govern and order the world and, in this process, language is fundamental” (Leal, 2016, p. 33).

Through language, as a sign par excellence, mediation between subject-object takes place, enabling the internalization of the elements of culture, so that the objective reality is transformed by the subject’s action, which when acting and modifying it is also transformed by it. Such transformations qualify the development of higher psychic functions and, therefore, “... involves the mastery of external means of development of culture and thought, such as language, writing, calculation, drawing, requiring the significant use of mediators and are directly linked to the schooling process ” (Leal, 2016, p. 43).

Therein lies the Vygotskian defense of the school as the main responsible for the teaching of scientific knowledge, considering that the learning of scientific concepts and more complex contents requires, for its understanding, logical thinking, driving the evolution of thought through the dialectic unity between form and content.

For the Soviet author, the changes that occur at this stage of development do not mean changes in the brain in its organic structure, but transformations in the forms of thought organization. That is why the defense of learning as a promoter of development is so important for Vygotsky, as it implies that higher psychic functions do not depend on the rate of brain growth or individual limitations, but depend on the quality of cultural mediation (Vygotsky, 2012).

Such is the importance of school education in working with scientific concepts, which contributes to the quality of cultural mediation. Through scientific concepts, the subject relates to reality in a different way, which allows spontaneous concepts to rise to generalizations that are more complex. This process occurs in the mediated relationship and in the systematic collaboration between teacher and student, whose teaching conditions contribute to the development of higher psychological functions and to the gradual increase in scientific thinking that organizes and qualifies spontaneous concepts. Thus, the learning of scientific concepts is essential to the adolescent’s cultural development. In addition, using the “... social signs, establishing relationships with the facts and objects apprehended, they can understand the social reality” (Leal, 2016, p. 45) and intervene in it.

Because we understand that the appropriation of school content is essential to the “... development of each person as an individual who can concretize in his life the humanization achieved to date by the human race” (Duarte, 2016, p. 95), in continuity from the text we analyze the possibilities of learning provided in a specific flow correction program, whose audience is teenagers between 13 and 17 years old who are behind in the schooling process.

METHOD

The research was developed based on a qualitative approach and an educational program that expresses the public-private partnership within the scope of public policies was taken as the object of analysis, focusing on the learning opportunities offered to the adolescents who attend it. Despite being a project under development across the state of Acre, our research field was the municipality of Cruzeiro do Sul, which had ten classes in progress at the time of the research.

The data were produced by document analysis and semi-structured interviews. Official documents were analyzed, such as the contracts signed between the State and the Roberto Marinho Foundation and guidelines for the Poronga project. The interviews were conducted based on a specific script, recorded and transcribed for analysis. In order to listen to the teachers who worked in different roles in the project, the interviews were conducted with seven professionals, two of whom were in charge of coordinating Poronga in the municipality, three teachers, who are responsible for teaching all the disciplines of the project and two advisors, who were assigned fictitious names, according to ethical procedures established in dialogue with the participants¹ to guarantee confidentiality about their identities.

The professionals, with specific emergency contracts to work on the project, had different times of dedication to the program, which varied from nine months to seven years. All were graduated, four in pedagogy and three in Portuguese.

The data were analyzed in the light of the reference of historical-cultural psychology, which made it possible to weave the reflections and considerations on the contributions of this project to the learning of scientific contents by the students.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Poronga Project: structure and operation

Poronga is an educational policy of correction of flow developed in partnership with the Roberto Marinho Foundation. In the course, which lasts two years, the contents of the sixth and seventh years are worked on in the first year and those of the eighth and ninth years in the second. They are divided into the three modules, which together correspond to the total workload of 1,752 hours, worked in 20 weekly hours and distributed over 428 school days (Brasil, 2016).

The classes are held based on the teaching material of Telecurso 2000, composed of DVD-videos with the programs / video classes, student and teacher books. Each video class should be worked in 04 hours daily, that is, each didactic sequence is elaborated based on the content of a class on television.

All subjects are taught by a single teacher who stays with the class during the two years of the program, except for physical education, which is the responsibility of regular schoolteachers, in the evening.

As for the work methodology of the disciplines, according to the coordinator Joana, this

... It is one of the qualities that FRM, in partnership with our general coordinator in Rio Branco, holds a lot. Because it is what it does, it is how to say it; it is the spring that really makes the project work is this differentiated methodology.

Thus, the pedagogical practice must strictly obey the following steps: integrative activity; problematizing / motivation; image reading; activity with the textbook and complementary activities, as described by teacher Graça:

We follow the methodology, starting with the integrating activity, this integrating activity can be dynamic, it can be a reflective text, when you speak integrative you are already saying that it is to integrate the students in the class. Then comes the problematizing of the content, this problematizing is what will encourage the student to want to watch the video. Then there is the video. Then, after the video, there is the image reading, this image reading will be the questions directed to the video, which can be in a very dynamic way, which can be oral questions. Then, after this explanation of the content, there will be, to build the concepts together with the students, because we teachers cannot give the concepts ready. Then, what happens? We need to instigate them in a way that builds the concept together with them. Then we have the extra activity, which is the activity to know if he really managed to assimilate the content. Then comes the complementary activity, which is a group activity. I usually divide the class into four groups, which is working in the case of the four teams. (Teacher Graça, interview, 2015, emphasis added)

The teaching methodology of the program comprises an educational practice focused on activity by the students, who, organized in a team, assist the teacher in the development of the class. This organization is based on the concept of active subject defended by the constructivist conception and that must be free, active, creative, daring, courageous, intelligent, thinking and constructive.

This centrality in the person of the student as one who learns by itself disregards that the development of superior capacities of conduct does not depend solely on each subject, but largely on cultural mediations and, in the classroom, on the teacher’s intervention, done intentionally (Rossler, 2006).

For historical-cultural psychology, the teaching process must start from the student’s social reality, however it must not be limited only to what is already given in the narrowness of the world experienced by each individual, but must guarantee the qualitative leap in development, or that is, for Vygotsky (2005, p. 33) “... school learning gives something completely new to the course of child development at school”. And, to go further, it is necessary to consider the active role of the different agents of the educational process, that is, teacher, student and content are active, each in their own way, so that in fact the qualitative development of the typically human psychological functions is guaranteed .

The way in which the sequence of the class is organized, delegates to the video classroom an essential role in the process of transmitting the content, as there is no moment foreseen for the teacher to carry out this action, even because they are teachers with training in pedagogy and letters that guide the teaching learning across all curriculum subjects. Thus, teachers are also apprentices, along with students, and do not have the resources to question what is presented in video classes, even if some content is out of date, since they were produced almost 20 years ago in Telecurso 2000.

I think that the student, we even had training on this, the student is the most important role; the most important is not the teacher, no. It is the student, but he needs a bridge that is the teacher. In addition, this teacher, he will be helping this student, you know, to build. (Teacher Graça, interview, 2015)

As for the evaluation, the program assumes the modalities defined by LDB / 1996 comprising the evaluation as being diagnostic, formative and summative, considered “... an essential element in the methodology used by Poronga. It is done in a wide way considering all the stages of the process” (Brasil, 2011, p. 57), so that it must occur “... every block of class / contents studied in the stage, varying from 10 to 20 classes each block, totaling 4 blocks of content, represented by 4 averages that are equivalent to the 4 bimonthly of the school year” (Brasil, 2011, p. 58). It also requires that 75% attendance be respected each year of the course.

In addition to the evaluative activities, the program works with the recovery that takes place “... at the end of 2 (two) blocks, considering note 7.0 (seven) as the minimum quality standard, which is what is expected as a minimum result to the end of each bimonthly or block of classes” (Brasil, 2011, p. 62). For students who do not get this grade, “... we will offer a NLO (New Learning Opportunity) at the end of each year, looking for records that the student has not yet developed, aiming to remedy the difficulties presented in the process” (Brazil , 2011, p. 62).

At the end of the two-year course, students who reach an average of 5 (after recovery) receive a certificate of completion of elementary school. Those who are not approved based on the consensus between teachers from Poronga and the school’s pedagogical coordination will be sent to a class of regular education where this student can be reinstated. It is worth mentioning that the failure rate was 3.2% in 13 years of program development in Acre.

These approval numbers in the project contribute to its valorization and the success is attributed to the methodological proposal, since the constructivist assumptions that support it value only the active role of students, denying teachers the task of teaching, in the name of being only assistants the construction of knowledge by students.

The fascination with the student’s active role seems to be a reason for the enchantment of the teachers at Poronga. This appreciation may be the result of criticism of the frontal model and the teacher that transmits the knowledge that teachers hear throughout the training without being presented with models that are consistent with the performance of a constructivist teacher. In the Poronga project, on the contrary, they receive guidance on how to be different teachers from the traditional model and the Roberto Marinho Foundation presents materials, resources (books and video lessons) and training in which they can experience each step to be followed.

However, a more careful look and attentive listening to the participants’ statements show that this enchantment has its limits and consequences, as we will see in the analysis below.

Learning process in acceleration classes: what teachers say about?

When, in the name of the student’s freedom and autonomy to learn, the teacher’s exercise of teaching is not guaranteed, the discourse of personal effort as individual responsibility is highlighted in the educational space, as we can observe in the statements of teacher Graça when questioned about student learning in Poronga:

... we know that there are students who want something, who are there to learn, but at the same time we know that there are students who only enter the room to mess up, who do not want to learn ... Now if they were students who read, were students who were interested, they would be able to learn, because the methodology itself is good.

When considering success or failure in learning as a result of the interest of each student and not of the possibilities offered by schooling or the pedagogical intervention of teachers, we identify the neoliberal ideology, which defends equality between citizens and the efficiency and effectiveness say respect to the attitudes, skills and dispositions of each individual (Harvey, 2014).

Thus, when individual accountability is taken to the ultimate consequences, for which everything is justified, explanations about students who do not learn are displaced from the objective conditions of appropriating knowledge for personal issues.

As identified in other research with projects aimed at students who do not follow the expected age for the grade (Souza, 2007; Lima, 2015), prejudice against those excluded from regular school is also recurrent in interviews with teachers when they seek to identify reasons for not learning:

... most come from unstructured families, you can see that most have a problem in the family, or our student at the beginning of the regular school year, he fell ill, he went through some health problem. That’s why it happens ... this gap is not just in learning. (Teacher Raimunda, interview, 2015)

... there is a student who advances almost nothing. However, the student who does not advance anything is the student who has the greatest problem with the discipline ... discipline is a problem of a student who only goes to play. It is more for disciplinary reasons. Because that student who goes with difficulty, with distortion, he wants, he likes the project, he tries and he learn. (Teacher Joaquina, interview, 2015)

By failing to expand the teachers’ understanding of the complexity of the social, political and pedagogical issues involved in school failure, the program contributes to the maintenance of prejudices against students who do not have a successful path and, therefore, proves to be limited in coping exclusion of this public, contrary to the justification for high public spending that underlies the official discourse.

The contributions of the participants denounce how much an educational practice that leaves the student to his own learning, when these subjects already come from a process of denying the right to learn, in addition to not guaranteeing a quality school education, continues to reproduce social inequalities, which materialize in the difficulties and prejudices that Poronga students face in continuing their studies:

Therefore, I notice a rejection in high school ... There is this rejection from those who come from the Project. What do they do? They include these students in the Special High School Program [SHSP], which is Poronga II, now called. However, as I told you, of those 100% of my students, usually 50% he is able to attend regular high school. They are, yes. (Teacher Joaquina, interview, 2015)

The teachers perceive that the program has limitations in guaranteeing access to knowledge, but they fail to understand that the way the teaching process gives the student the responsibility for his own learning, giving him freedom to learn to learn, does not contribute to formation of autonomous subjects and citizens, as they lack the fundamental tools, that is, the domain of knowledge (Duarte, 2001). Moreover, contradictorily to their defense of the project’s methodology, the teachers themselves recognize that the expansion of Poronga to high school is a way of further aggravating this exclusion process.

When teacher Joaquina says that only 50% of the class has the capacity to continue their studies, it shows how empty the discourse of education for all can be when it does not guarantee the appropriation of knowledge. In other words, “... those discriminated against yesterday remain those discriminated against today” (Oliveira, 2007, p. 682). Today’s discriminated people, selected for Poronga, form the group to which the “undesirables” of the school are destined: those who fail in regular education, those who have some learning difficulty, and those who came from the rubber plantation late in school because there was no school in that place, described by the teacher as a diverse audience:

... our audience is diverse, it is very diverse in relation to learning. I have an illiterate student, but I have a student who already ... wow! This class is mine this year .... I had already worked with a drugged, criminal student, but this year it was even more .... For the sake of learning, because I work with many students with intellectual disabilities. And ... and ... I fought yet, I still asked, because if it’s an acceleration process, you can’t have a student with disabilities. He’s already laaaazy... The director and my coordinator from last year claim what? That they have to be included. That they have the right to be included, but then what I questioned but there are eight students! I started with eight students with disabilities, in a class from Poronga. It is very hard! I would have to do a miracle. My luck is that I had different students: I had one with epilepsy that did not influence learning, she was slow, but she had good writing, she was interested, that progressed; there is a student with visual impairment, but if I use large letters in the activity, she can follow, she has difficulty in writing, but she can understand and follow; now, I have two students that they just copy from the board; if you ask him to write a sentence “I love you”, he can’t do it, and he will finish it now and he didn’t advance, no. Their inclusion was only participation with the students, but the content, the learning, the skill is almost zero. It remains excluded. (Teacher Joaquina, interview, 2015)

Faced with the conditions described by the teacher, an educational practice really concerned with inclusion, with the formation of autonomy and citizenship could never neglect organized, intentional and adequate teaching to the needs of students, as a condition of human development. However, under the conditions in which the program is organized, teachers act as they can. In addition, in addition to the resources pointed out by teacher Joaquina, the traditional reinforcement is offered to students. The resource that segregates stigmatizes and, therefore, is rejected by students.

In some moments, we work in the tutoring class. I work in the reinforcement class with diversified activities, so that I can help their needs. Oh, what happens? An hour is taken to give this reinforcement. However, there is a catch, my daughter that they don’t want to come. We have a great difficulty, because they don’t want to participate ... They think they are being inferior, in relation to others, then they don’t want to. (Teacher Graça, interview, 2015)

If we consider, by the principles of historical-cultural psychology, that autonomy and the ability to participate in society are only possible through the domain of knowledge that allows each individual to appropriate the cultural elements that allow him to participate in social transformation and not only adapting to the current model of society, the program that claims to be doing the best for students in age-year distortion, in practice, may be contributing to the maintenance of exclusion processes.

... we already had a lot of prejudice, the principals themselves, (tone down) the principal of the school I worked for, she treated the Project like this, as if the project was not part of the school ... Yeah ... but only when students enter Poronga, they also have this prejudice. The student, the student himself, is prejudiced against entering the project, saying that it belongs to the project, because.... They think that the project is for those who don’t know much. They have a lot of that vision. (Teacher Antônia, interview, 2015)

The teachers revealed the exclusionary process experienced in the acceleration classes by them and by the students. Thus, a project defended by official documents as an instrument for the transformation of the educational system in the State is unable to fulfill what is proposed, as it disregards the essential in the educational process, the need to organize teaching in order to work according the level of student development which will not be accomplished with ready-made packages that disregard the subjects of the process, they are students or teachers.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Poronga’s analysis shows that, on the one hand, the program is helping to minimize the age-year distortion rates in Acre, on the other hand, discrimination and limits in the learning process are not worth celebrating. The discrimination process experienced by teachers and students at Poronga implies yet another challenge: they need to prove every day that they are capable. The basis of the productive society that generates exclusion appears in the logic that the useless need to be eliminated from the system, also prevailing in the way the school deals with those considered useless in society.

The learning results at Poronga, as described by the teachers, express that, despite all the valorization of the video class methodology, the schooling of these students has contributed little to overcome exclusion and human emancipation. The elements presented indicate how much the theory of personal effort contaminated the teachers’ discourse, when they affirm that everything depends on the will, on the individual effort of the students, limiting them in the possibility of questioning the material conditions of the educational practice and the real conditions of development of students.

Considering that the students of the project are teenagers between 13 and 17 years old, being an age defended by Vygotsky as having great possibilities in the development of conceptual thinking, it is necessary, for that, the quality of school education as a space of cultural mediation in schooled societies. However, when the program proposal, based on a constructivist conception that considers “... the focus on the learning of the student who builds his knowledge alone, the transmission process and the knowledge itself are relegated to the second or third plane” (Facci, 2011, p. 135) and the student is held responsible for his own failure (Patto, 1999).

As in the Project the role of the teacher is in the second plan, in the name of learning to learn, the lack of equal opportunities for learning for all is disregarded and, therefore, contributes to the aggravation of exclusion and discrimination revealed by the teachers’ discourse on the rejection of Poronga classes in schools.

Discrimination is aggravated when the conception of education comprises the development unrelated to learning, disregarding the social nature of man, “... whose development is conditioned by the activity that links him to nature” (Martins, 2013, p. 271). When this logic prevails, learning and development are dependent on personal effort, further limiting the possibilities for students’ progress with trajectories marked by denial of the right to learning.

This is revealed in a perverse way in the practice of Poronga, which contributes to the maintenance of the exclusion of those who are physically in school, but excluded from the right to learn, since the social, economic and cultural conditions in which the students live are disregarded. The program appears as the place to which the “undesirables” of the education system are destined, without being given the proper opportunities for learning and overcoming limitations accumulated throughout their school trajectories.

When the State of Acre, over the years, attributes to a program produced and developed by a private institution, so distant from the reality of the people of Acre, the responsibility of facing the school backwardness of its students, considers only the indices as indicators of quality completion of elementary school.

However, careful assessments of the quality of the results and of the problems of regular education that continue to generate dropouts and failures that feed the numbers of age-year distortion are necessary and urgent. Otherwise, we will continue to condemn and exclude those who fail at school, because in the logic of capitalist society the weak have no time, being held responsible for individual results.

If, within regular education, students who fail are already excluded because they do not correspond to the profile of success defined in that society, by creating a form of segregation in a single program for those who fail at school, they become the target explicit prejudice that already exists in society and is reproduced at school.

Thus, when the educational policy that aims to include, correct the distortion, does not focus on the major purpose of education in which the learning of scientific knowledge through the teacher’s intervention drives development, it may be contributing to the process that Gentili (2009) denounces as the practice of exclusionary inclusion in Brazilian education, through educational compensation policies that, concerned with ensuring entry and progression in schooling, have neglected access to scientific knowledge.

Finally, it is important to highlight that the present study was limited to the analysis of documents and interviews with the professionals involved. New studies that accompany the development, in the classroom, of this type of program and investigate the learning process of the students who attend it may contribute with other elements for the analysis of the flow correction policies.

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• 1
  The project was submitted and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Rondônia under the number CAEE 42981215.8.0000.5300.

• This paper was translated from Portuguese by Ana Maria Pereira Dionísio.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  18 May 2020
• Date of issue
  2020

History

• Received
  03 Jan 2019
• Accepted
  29 July 2019