“Página infeliz da nossa história”: um olhar transdisciplinar sobre os impactos da pandemia para a educação básica cearense a partir da cobertura do Jornal O Povo

Abstract

I present a thesis project that focuses on how the local press, more specifically the newspaper O Povo, reported on the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for education in Ceará. The viral disease proved extremely deadly and forced governments worldwide to shut down non essential activities to contain the collapse of health systems, flatten the contagion curve, and, consequently, reduce the disease's lethality. Here in Brazil, the first cases began to be recorded in February 2020, but the first death occurred on March 12th, a period that coincides with the adoption of harsher measures by governors, who began, each in their own time, to decree social isolation and the suspension of non-essential activities to stem the spread of the virus, as the federal government adopted a denialist and anti-science stance. It was in this context that schools and universities were closed throughout Brazil, and the population found, in the press, a reliable channel for obtaining information about this common threat. Based on these premises, the overall objective of this work is to analyze the news narratives that focused on the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic for basic education in Ceará. The methodology employed in this thesis to achieve this objective was Critical Narrative Analysis, proposed by Professor Luiz Gonzaga Motta. The empirical analysis considered news stories published by the newspaper O Povo between March 16, 2020—the date the social isolation decree was published in the state of Ceará, with the closure of schools, daycare centers, and universities— and May 5, 2023, when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the end of the pandemic. The conclusion is that we have a narrative that prioritized the economic losses caused by school closures, to the detriment of the real consequences for the learning, development, and mental health of thousands of children and young people in Ceará.