Mulheres educadoras e escolarização formal em Ibicuitinga Ceará (1983 1994)

Abstract

This research analyzed the historical and territorial formation and the educational configuration of the municipality of Ibicuitinga, in the Sertão Central of Ceará, between 1983 and 1994, with emphasis on educational policies, school institutions, and fem ale protagonism. The study is part of the field of History of Education, based on a socio historical approach, seeking to understand how territorial and political dynamics influenced the organization of public education in the hinterland. The qualitative m ethodology relied on documentary analysis and Oral History, mobilizing teachers’ narratives, institutional records, and official sources to reconstruct the processes of institutionalization of the local school. The results reveal that schooling in Ibicuiti nga was consolidated through the decisive action of female educators, literate women (mulheres letradas) who acted as lamps (candeeiros) in the sertão, and through hybrid models, such as the Movimento das Escolas Reunidas, which filled the initial abse nce of the State through community practices in improvised spaces. It was found that educational policies were appropriated in a contextualized manner, generating local solutions to structural limitations, within a transitional scenario marked by the count ry's redemocratization and the interiorization of teaching in Ceará. The investigation of oral sources allowed for filling the silences of public archives, revealing that the pedagogy of sacrifice and the ethical commitment of the teachers were the true pillars of school expansion in the region. It was observed that the school functioned as a territory of symbolic dispute and gender affirmation, where teachers broke through the isolation of the countryside to produce an institutionality that preceded gove rnment bureaucracy. The study concludes that the educational history of Ibicuitinga demonstrates the centrality of female trajectories as the cornerstone of public education, where female teaching mediated the transition from informality to officialdom wit h autonomy and resilience. This work contributes to the valorization of teaching memory and the understanding of the processes of democratization of knowledge in the semi arid region, offering historical reparation to the educators who, through daily pract ices of resistance, transformed the socio educational reality of the municipality in times of foundation and administrative uncertainty