Professor Municipal: entre as políticas educacionais e as trajetórias pessoais

Abstract

This thesis studies the work of the Brazilian municipal public education system teachers. It discusses the relationship between the educational policies that characterized the last decade and the teachers personal paths that take and keep them on primary and secondary school teaching. The research was based on the puclic primary and secondary schools of the Ceará State, Brazilian Northeast. Starting from the Interpretation Methodology I analyze thirty schooling and teaching memorials written by the teachers and also, documents about the educational policies. Those were produced or distributed by the state and municipal instances, during the period from 1996 to 2002. On both of them, the directives responsible for the teaching decentralization and municipalization are clear. They have implications on the teaching work regulations and conceptions about their occupational activities. The teaching work in Aracati is, in great measure, the expression of the educational policies developed on Ceará State, which by its turn presents a close accordance with international organisms orientations. However, the teachers also reveal great personal paths that have influence on the values and ethic principles that orientate their work quality despite of the influence of a neoliberal ideology on the school management. The salary expectancy of the teacher is modest, as a result of the historical precariousness of the work in the municipal level, on what it is related to regulation as the low salaries worth. There is a propitious background for conformism and resignation. Because of that, teachers admit that their work regulation by the means of the Nacional Assistance and Development law of primary and secondary Education (Fundef) partially overcomes the fragility of the teaching admission and contract on the municipal scope. Teachers’ reaction to the educational and schooling changes as a consequence of the policies adopted, goes from amazement to disappointment, from the passivity that is protected by the “new times novelties” ideological wrapper to the revolt shaped in the angriness against the clear contradictions. Teachers claim dignity on their work, besides the economical worries, linked also to the necessities of greater participation on decisions over educational policies. However, they do not associate the changes in educational field to the Brazilian State restructuration process, neither to the neoliberal perspective that orientates it. The reconstruction of the life and work paths, in face of the memorials, gives impulse to the formation of a personal and professional counscienceness, turning the teachers into social subjects concerned on their students’ moral education.