Teacher Without Teaching: school and teacher project for special education (1996-2016)

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to contribute to the discussion on the project of public school and of teacher for Special Education as proposed by Brazilian educational policies in the beginning of the 21st century. Based on historical-dialectical materialism, we analyzed national documents that represents the Special Education policy between 1996 and 2016. We found that the public-school project is anchored in the assistance bias, with an increase in the private sector’s entry into its management. Special education in the current perspective reinforces the service characteristic to be provided in regular schools, and the teacher, in this context, is one resource used, among others. Such considerations corroborate the determinations of multilateral organizations for education.

Keywords
Professor de Educação Especial; Função Social da Escola; Política de Educação Especial

RESUMO

O objetivo deste artigo é contribuir com o debate do projeto de escola pública e de professor para a educação especial proposto nas políticas educacionais no início do século XXI no Brasil. Com base no materialismo histórico-dialético, analisamos documentos nacionais representativos da política de educação especial entre 1996 e 2016. Constatamos que o projeto de escola pública está ancorado no viés assistencialista, com ampliação da entrada do setor privado em sua gestão. A educação especial na atual perspectiva reforça a característica de serviço a ser prestado nas escolas regulares, e o professor, nesse contexto, é mais um recurso utilizado. Tais considerações corroboram com as determinações das Organizações Multilaterais para a educação.

Palavras-chave
Special Education Teacher; School Social Function; Special Education Policy

Introduction

With this article we aim to present the research on the Special Education teacher¹ project as proposed within the scope of educational policies to meet the Brazilian public school Project in the beginning of the 21st century. To this end, based on historical dialectical materialism, we carried out analyzes of national documents with an emphasis on the years 1996 to 2016.

The documents from the 1990s represent an ongoing Educational Reform and its influence on the composition of the special Education policy at the beginning of the 21st century, which is strongly characterized by the inclusive perspective. The educational policy from an inclusive perspective has been intensified in Brazil since 2008 with the encouragement of enrollment of students with disabilities, Global Development Disorders (GDD) and high skills/giftedness in regular schools. The development of this analysis requires reflecting on the public-school Project, necessary for the perpetuation of capital, with an emphasis on basic Education, and, within, the Special Education teacher project that is being required as part of this process. We consider that such a study, having public basic Education as a focus, affirms the class struggle as a fundamental element to understand the phenomenon studied and its relations with the Education offered to the working class.

It is important to highlight that these relationships are not immediate and linear, in view of the disputes surrounding the school and teacher project. Understanding the determinations that imply this redirection of the public school and the Special Education teacher is crucial to analyze the current political project.

The theory seeks to explain the totality in the essence of the objects of investigation and, thus, assists in the understanding of reality. Marx (1978, p. 130), assists us on the method of analysis by stating that “The way of producing material life conditions the process of social, political and spiritual life in general. It is not the conscience of man that determines his being, but, on the contrary, it is his social being that determines his conscience”. Man as a social being produces consciousness when relating to nature, however the relations of production are extremely complex, when, for example, they clash with the material productive forces of society.

We seek to reflect on the Special Education teacher project and the meditations that involved it, based on the analysis of official documents that we consider to be representative of educational policy. We agree with Evangelista (2010, p. 1) when stating: “I work with the idea that such materials – coming from the State apparatus, from multilateral organizations and from agencies and intellectuals that gravitate in their orbit – express not Only guidelines for Education, but articulate interests, design policies, produce social interventions”. Or, yet

For, this reason, our interest in working with documents is not in the text itself as a final object of explanation, but as a unit of analysis that allows us to have access to the discourse to understand politics. We do not take the text as an absolute starting point, but as an object of interpretation

(Shiroma; Campos; Garcia; 2005, p. 439).

Thus, we reflect on: is the inclusive perspective in mainstream schools being incorporated into the dismantling policies of public schools as an integral part of the new training requirements for simple work? To what extent does the project of a teacher for Special Education, converted into an SEA teacher by the current policy from an inclusive perspective, contribute to the consolidation of the public-school project for the Capital? What are the mediations between a welfare school model, with business management characteristics, and the need to reconvert the special education teacher to the SEA model?

Special Education and the Public School in Educational Policies

It is in the tangle of interests of the capital-labor relationship, intermediated by the State, that Special Education is found in an inclusive perspective, within the disputes of conceptions that direct proposals for this modality in Basic Education. The National Policy on Special Education from the perspective of inclusive education (Brasil, 2008a) reaffirms Brazil’s commitment to the precepts of Education for All (Unesco, 1990). This specific document redirects all enrollments of students from special education at school age to regular education and establishes this perspective through Decree 6.571 (Brasil, 2008b), which establishes Specialized Educational Assistance (SEA) as a privileged strategy for the education of subjects with disabilities, TGD and high skills/giftedness in regular schools. Even with its revocation by Decree 7.611 (Brasil, 2011a), that resumes the possibility of public funding to specialized institutions, and the attempt to update² this policy in 2020, the perspective of all enrollments in regular schools remains in force.

The constitution of the public school in capitalist society represents the interests of capital for the training of the working class and, depending on its interests of accumulation, it undergoes adaptations. At the beginning of the 21st century in Brazil, this institution has been characterized by its assistance turn (Evangelista; Leher, 2012) or as Saviani (2013) states: it is being directed as a social assistance agency through programs and focal projects aimed at social restraint or poverty alleviation. Algebaile (2009, p. 25) calls this model of school a kind of post for carrying out social actions, which overlap with access to systematized knowledge. The school for the sake of capital projects for the working-class training for simple work, with the mastery of basic contents, but above all it knows how to undertake in life, be flexible, proactive, and innovative.

Thinking about the school and how it is being articulated for the maintenance of the current order, as, for example, with the idea of a space for poverty alleviation and the offer of social programs conditioned to it (Algebaile, 2009) makes us reflect on the teacher project within the scope of their social relationships.

Educational political propositions are articulated and mediated by Multilateral Organizations (MO). According to Dale (2004, p. 448),

The effective content of the message linked by international organizations is based on models, categories, and guidelines through which the world is universalized and, at a given level, unified (even if this unity forms the basis of subsequent conflicts). Thus, even symbolic conformity assumes and reinforces the strength of models and categories.

These are policies linked to economic and political interests, in which education and school are included. In other words, analyzing the school and the teacher in the context of economic and social policies is fundamental for us to understand the special education teacher project that is on the agenda. Bearing in mind that, as Garcia (2014, p. 103) points out, “Over the past two decades, economic crises have contributed to consolidate the idea that it is necessary to build an inclusive climate in society, of solidarity and social capital, that aggregates the population”. The public school is one of the spaces in which this idea is disseminated, and for this purpose, for example, teacher training policies are reformulated (Evangelista; Shiroma, 2007; Triches, 2010), as well as assistance policies are implemented within school walls (Algebaile, 2009).

The school and the teacher are called to serve the interests of capital, be it of an economic nature (with training for simple work, for example) or even of social restraint (with assistance programs and projects). However, in the particularity of the school there are disputes about projects and interests, just as teachers are historical and contradictory subjects. Thus, as stated by Shiroma and Evangelista (2015, p. 109),

Teachers are not being fought because they are anachronistic, but because they can refuse conversion, they can announce the new, they can train children, youth, and adults, in the fields and cities, who question the present social order, who think historically and who architect the future and the transition to another social order.

The interest in the school and in the teacher exposed in educational policies is intentional and it is part of a society project, at the same time that teachers offer risks to the order of this system. Understanding these particularities and singularities about the school is crucial for the analysis of the special education teacher project in progress.

Special education policy in the inclusive perspective is part of a society project that aims to transform schools into a part of the inclusive education system, in which the concept of differences is not limited to disability, but is extended to other aspects such as race, belief, sex. This project of society that uses the school as a privileged place of training for the changes underway in the productive process, transforms the democratization of scientifically produced knowledge into something irrelevant.

In this perspective, the special education teacher should not teach content related to the areas of knowledge, but enable interaction, creativity, and guide these students to live in this society and adapt to the school through techniques and materials in the multifunctional resource rooms. Such indication reflects special education as a field of knowledge in view of the spontaneous character of a proposal that focuses on facilitating learning that does not require teaching.

The discourse for an education in favor of respect for differences and for an inclusive education system exposes its contradiction when special education students are inserted in this space, because, if there is a direction towards the school’s objective as it no longer has the role of transmitting historically produced knowledge for so-called ordinary students, what is the purpose of the school for special education students then? We ask: where will special education students relate to school knowledge through the teaching and learning process?

In the analysis of the specific documentation, the change in conception on special education is noticeable, which is sometimes substitute for ordinary education, sometimes transposed into a specialized service in regular schools, that is, although it has a fundamental component in enabling access to the classroom, regular classroom, the emphasis of the special education policy is hitherto centered on the SEA. In line with the change in conception on special education are the conceptual changes that name this policy and, possibly, contribute to these new perspectives.

Based on these discussions, we can say that special education is part of a broader educational project and that it undergoes intervention through State policies as a mediator of capital (Vaz, 2017).

Special Education Teacher in Educational Policies

Brazilian Educational policies from the 1990s are marked by Educational Reforms that went far beyond the production of documents, but spread a conception linked to international interests, economic development, and a new mode of production that Harvey (1998) called flexible accumulation. Shiroma, Moraes and Evangelista (2002, p. 87) state that

A national education policy is more comprehensive than the proposed legislation on the organization of the area. It is also carried out through educational planning and financing of government programs that are informally propagated by the media. It takes place, in addition to these spaces, through the dissemination of its ideas through official and unofficial publications. The 1990s’ reform also involved and committed intellectuals into specialized committees, curricular parameters analysis, elaboration of references and opinions.

The educational reforms were intense in the 1990s, but they had already been showing evidence in the mid-1970s and are expressions of international directions for the regulation of world capital. As Melo (2005, p. 71) points out that,

However, from the 1970s onwards, with the intensification of the oil crisis, the collapse in the balance of payments of indebted countries and the risk of debt dilation or even a moratorium, with a concomitant risk of insolvency in donor countries, a new type of international hegemonic conduction was necessary, in order to guarantee again the survival of capitalism eternally in crisis.

Multilateral Organizations (MO), in this sense, subscribed the norms for a new way of approaching for the dominant class towards the working class. Education was considered key to the training of a different type of worker, but also as a space for ideologizing conservative ideals.

The documents originating in the 1990s³ influenced the construction of educational policies in Brazil and were fundamental for the installation of a new way of orienting the population with populist slogans and a discourse about fighting inequality.

Garcia and Michels (2011, p. 106) state that

The 1990s, in Brazil, were characterized as a period of reforms, whether within the State in general or in the specificity of the area of education, considered in that context as a privileged field for the maintenance of social relations. Such reforms affect all sectors of education, including Special Education.

In this sense, the educational reform of the 1990s disseminated the concept of inclusive education, which is related to a supposed idea of an inclusive society. The discourse of school inclusion contributes to the conception of the school as a space for solving social problems, in which it is inserted in the theory of human capital, as well as in the 1970s, but with the most appealing discourse. In this conception, the school is the fundamental space for solving the problems of society, in this specific case, propelling the ideal of social inclusion.

Even with the updates added until 2016, the Law n. 9.394/1996, known as National Educational Guidelines and Bases Law (LDBEN) continues to affirm the integration model and the teacher with specific training for specialized care. This law also aids students with disabilities, global developmental disorders, and qualified discharge/giftedness⁴ preferably in regular education, that is, it allows the enrollment of special education students in segregated institutions, thus reaffirming the continuum of services. The special education teacher, treated in this period as a specialized teacher, does not present major changes from the one proposed in the 1970s and 1980s.

Based on the National Education Guidelines and Bases Law (LDBEN) (Brasil, 1996) documents were published at the beginning of the 21st century aiming to organize the field of Special Education in the country. Opinion CNE/CEB 17, of June 3, 2001 (Brasil, 2001a) and Resolution CNE/CEB 2, of September 11, 2001 (Brasil, 2001b), comprised the National Guidelines for Special Education in Basic Education (Brasil, 2001c) and were in line with the prescriptions on this modality.

According to the Opinion, as well as Resolution CNE/CEB 2 (Brasil, 2001b), which succeeds, the teachers who work with Special Education students are: the trained teacher and the specialized teacher.

The specialized teacher is the special education teacher, one who has a high school, college or Latu Sensu graduate degree specific on special education. As it appears, the specialized teacher is responsible for: supporting in the regular classroom, complement or supplement in the resource rooms, or even substituting in special classes and schools (Brasil, 2001b). It should be noted that the resource rooms provided in this period are characterized by the attendance of specific disabilities. Garcia (2004, p. 6) when analyzing the proposals of the National Guidelines for Special Education in Basic Education, points to some questions:

It was observed that the policy in question supports varied models of care that can coexist in the education systems. Thus, it does not present a single national proposal for special education, but a national policy that regulates the coexistence of different projects. This plurality of types of assistance in special education is justified by the diversity of students, by their difficulties and differences. However, would not plurality also mean unequal educational goals and results? Wouldn’t the proposal, from the beginning, be open to the possibility that students ‘with special needs’ have a differentiated and unequal education?

As we can see, until this historic moment, the proposal for special education has not changed significantly since the creation of the National Center for Special Education (CENESP), despite the differences over the use of the term integration and inclusion. School inclusion, presented here, is characterized by gradual, planned and continuous inclusion (Brasil, 2001a).

During the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2002-2010) of the Workers’ Party (PT) and coalitions, the term inclusion gained strength, accompanied by guidelines from Multilateral Organizations, especially with the aim of breaking with the idea of gradual inclusion. The speech was precisely the inclusion of all students of special education in regular education, without exceptions, to combat, as they claim, the retrograde view of attendance in segregated environments. However, as we have already noted, educational policies are in line with the training needs for the worker required by the capital.

The propaganda on school inclusion policy is affirmed as a paradigm break proposing that the space in which special education students should be is in the regular school and thinking about the other spaces is to reaffirm exclusion. Students served by special education are restricted to persons with disabilities (visual, hearing, physical and intellectual), persons with Global Developmental Disorders (GDD) and persons with high skills/giftedness. Students with specific functional disorders are no longer part of the target audience.

The formulation of special education in regular school system is Specialized Educational Assistance (SEA) as foreseen in the document,

Specialized Educational Assistance identifies, elaborates, and organizes pedagogical and accessibility resources that eliminate barriers to the full participation of students, considering their specific needs. Activities developed in specialized educational services are different from those carried out in the common classroom and are not substitutes for schooling. This service complements and/or supplements the training of students with a view to autonomy and independence at school and outside of it

(Brasil, 2008a, p. 16).

The SEA is carried out through multifunctional resources rooms, which has the characteristic of serving the entire target audience of special education, unlike the resource rooms proposed in the 1990s. Work in these rooms is done during the school shift and aims to complement or supplement regular education. The replacement for regular education is no longer provided in this documentation. Thus, the locus of action of the special education teacher, here called as the SEA teacher, is the multifunctional resource room.

Decree 6.571 (Brasil, 2008b) was published with the purpose to ensure the implementation of the special education proposal in an inclusive perspective with the SEA in regular schools. However, this decree was revoked by Decree 7.611 (Brasil, 2011a) which again considers public financing for specialized institutions. This process occurred as an expression of the disputes present in the field of special education sent by those who defend segregated education as a space with more possibilities to work on the specificities of students in this modality – with large support of institutions, such as the Association of Parents and Friends of the Exceptional (APFE), for example – and those who defend the unrestricted school inclusion of this target audience. Ordinance 243, of April 15, 2016 (Brasil, 2016a) was produced to legitimize the existence of segregated institutions, as described:

It establishes the criteria for the functioning, evaluation and supervision of public and private institutions that provide educational assistance to students with disabilities, global developmental disorders, and high skills/giftedness (Brasil, 2016).

A major expression of this dispute was the change in the special education policy set out in Decree 10.502, of September 30, 2020, by Jair Messias Bolsonaro’s presidency (no party) and the strong pressure from the population against this change, resulting in the suspension of the decree by the Supreme Federal Court on December 18, 2020, alleging its unconstitutionality.

In relation to teachers, the proposal continues to equate teachers of special education and SEA teachers (Vaz, 2017), now also provided in segregated institutions, according to Ordinance 243 (Brasil, 2016). Thus, the subsequent documents to Decree 6.571 (Brasil, 2008b) continue to be in force. Opinion CNE/CEB 13, of June 3, 2009 (Brasil, 2009a) and Resolution CNE/CEB 4, of October 2, 2009 (Brasil, 2009b) provide guidelines for the implementation of SEA in regular schools and emphasize the teacher who works with special education students as an SEA teacher. Such a teacher, as we have already mentioned, is foreseen in the political proposal to act in the multifunctional resource rooms, both in regular schools and in specialized institutions. His assignments become complementary or supplementary to regular education through adapted resources and materials.

However, as foreseen in Resolution 4 (Brasil, 2009b), there is a range of assignments directed to this specific teacher that are not related to attendance in the multifunctional resource rooms. Their assignments are centered on characteristics of technical services or inclusion management in regular schools. However, for Garcia (2013, p. 115),

The service model proposed by the policy makes the special education teacher a multifunctional being, a name attributed to resource rooms that serve all types of students in the modality. Michels (2011) considers that in view of the need to account for such a wide scope, which contrasts with the restriction of training based on activities and resources, the SEA teacher becomes a manager of learning resources. We believe that in this way the essence of teaching action is lost.

The criticism guided by Garcia (2013) expresses the loss of the essence of the teacher, as proposed by the policy, by privileging work based on the techniques and management of the inclusion policy within the school. This political proposal de-characterizes the teaching action of that specific teacher, both due to the attributions and the training model. One way to implement this conception of technical teacher/manager is the way of naming them. In the analyzed documentation, the indistinction between the SEA teacher and the teacher of special education is manifest. In other words, in addition to matching the proposal of this specific teacher to the SEA teacher, it limits their performance outside the regular classroom, that is, in the multifunctional resources room. It is important to emphasize that, historically, this specific teacher has been marked by training and performance based on the medical-pedagogical conception (Michels, 2004) and that work in the regular classroom as a mediator of systematized knowledge has never been in the horizon of educational policies.

In order to shape the special education teacher to the desired profile, one of the ways to convert him into an SEA teacher is the requirement of continuing education. Unlike specialized teachers, the SEA teacher must have continued training in specific courses on Specialized Educational Assistance offered by the federal government in partnership with higher education institutions.

It should be noted that due to training, the SEA teacher is different from the specialized teacher, with the first attending continuing education as the main focus and the second having both initial and continuing education. However, the character of continuing education in SEA has characteristics of initial training, in view of the fact that the licensed teacher is repositioned to another role in the school environment. It is a faster and cheaper way to train teachers in the desired way and reconvert it to the demands of the policy in question.

The policies of continuing education are an important element to be highlighted, as they are part of the training project for teachers of basic education, including the teacher who works with students of special education. According to Michels (2011, p. 81),

In relation to training, the World Bank (1995) points out in-service (or continuing) training as the most effective strategy to qualify teachers. ECLAC (1995), on the other hand, indicates the distance modality as the most appropriate. These two referrals together (in-service and distance training) would be the most economically viable for these agencies.

In addition to the discourse of education for all, there are economic interests in education, both in cutting spending and in adapting training for workers. Teacher training is one of the measures adopted by educational policies to implement the school project and the society project. As Evangelista (2001, p. 8) states, “[…] teacher education is a ‘worldwide’ issue. It is a twofold sense: the teacher threatens the State's project by opposing it; and forward it if they are convinced of it”.

The term teacher reconversion used by Evangelista (2010) to demonstrate the process of adapting the teacher to the educational project through teacher training, is central to examining how the special education teacher project is carried out.

Teacher reconversion through training takes place in at least two aspects: 1) it modifies their attributions, that is, it has characteristics of initial training; and 2) reconverts the teacher in the adherence, implementation, and dissemination of the policy, that is, it appeases the possible resistance to this model in schools. Shiroma (2011, p. 4) states that,

In this context, the search for new type of professionals, flexible, capable of managing unforeseen, innovative, proactive, and efficient, brought new demands to the educational systems. The dilemma for capital is evident, which depends on more qualified workers to gain competitive advantages, but who do not question the status quo. This is also a dilemma for the capitalist state that must train them.

The reconversion of the special education teacher into an SEA teacher also meets the requirements of Capital by understanding that a new type of teacher – who does not need to be an effective teacher – is needed to assist in this new model of inclusive society in which it becomes necessary to adapt everyone to the labor market, which, in these characteristics, caters to simple work or the informal, entrepreneurial market. The proposal for special education in an inclusive perspective is related to the educational reforms of basic education.

The effectuation of SEA in regular schools is also present in the National Education Plan (NEP) (2014-2024), which foresees in its Goal 4 to increase the number of multifunctional resource rooms and to promote the training of teachers for the SEA. As well as in the Guidance Manual of the Program for the Implementation of Multifunctional Resource Rooms (Brasil, 2010).

The SAE teacher, focus of the special education policy of 2008, has their work focused on multifunctional resources rooms in regular schools. Garcia (2013, p. 112) deepens the analysis by stating that

Reconverting teachers becomes a fundamental political strategy to produce changes in the mentality of the population, on a continuous basis, throughout life and in the direction necessary to the interests of the hegemonic societal project. With this, the reconversion takes on the features of adjustments, training, recycling, moving away from what could be called a solid theoretical background for the exercise of the profession.

In this sense, the special education teacher is treated in the representative texts of educational policy by using different terminologies in order to articulate a new conception of the teacher.

The Teacher, the Educator, or the Education Professional in Educational Policies

It becomes evident in the analysis of the selected documentation that the concept of teacher is volatile, but intentional. As we have already discussed, in the documents prior to 2008 (Brasil, 2001a; Brasil, 2001b) the special education teacher was called specialized, and later that teacher was replaced by the SEA teacher. Both are mentioned as teachers, but, according to our understanding, they do not carry the essence of being a teacher: teaching the systematized knowledge produced historically. As we have already noted, the shift of special education from a teaching modality to a service in regular schools through the SEA intensifies the characteristic of this teacher as a technician and policy manager, or, as Michels questions (2011, p. 88), “[…] a manager of specialized pedagogical resources”. Even so, it is foreseen in the Opinion CNE/CEB 13 (Brasil, 2009a, p. 6) “V - teachers for the exercise of SEA teaching”.

In the political discourse, considering the need to convince and adhere to the proposed policy, there is an intention that this teacher takes a teaching role. The document Special Education in the perspective of school inclusion (Ropoli et. al, 2010, p. 19) demonstrates what it is considered as the role of SEA teacher

Ordinary teachers and Special Education teachers need to get involved so that their specific teaching objectives are achieved, sharing interdisciplinary and collaborative work. The work fronts of each teacher are different. The teacher of the common classroom is assigned the teaching of the areas of knowledge, and the SEA teacher is responsible for complementing/supplementing the student's training with specific knowledge and resources that eliminate the barriers that prevent or limit their participation with autonomy and independence in the regular classes of regular Education.

In this sense, the teacher referred to here is one who works with resources and accessibility. The teacher proposed in the documents is the multifunctional teacher (Vaz, 2017), since it absorbs all the attributions destined to him, while restricting their training to the instrumental model of SEA (Borowsky, 2010; Michels, 2011). At this point, we raise the same question punctuated by Evangelista and Shiroma (2007) when analyzing the National Curricular Guidelines for the Pedagogy Course (Brasil, 2006),

[…] Simultaneously explain a restriction on the content of teacher training, centered on a perspective of instrumental knowledge, and an extension of teaching functions incorporating, for example, management tasks and others not linked to teaching (Evangelista, 2006). Here, the concern with the efficiency and effectiveness of teaching work is manifested, inserted in a rationalizing, technical, pragmatic logic, which finds in the abstract defense of the use of information and communication technologies its most finished expression. It should be noted that Resolution 1/06 does not use the term teacher, but the idea of teaching strongly appears. In other words, it establishes the primacy of teaching as an action to the detriment of the teacher as a subject

(Evangelista; Shiroma, 2007, p. 536).

We observed the close correlation of teacher education policies for teachers of basic education with those specific to teachers of special education. This assumption, in our analysis, endorses the fact that the practice based on the efficiency of the results stands out from the act of teaching inherent to the teacher. In the case of documents that express the policy, the term teacher does not highlight its action based on the socialization of knowledge produced historically.

The term professional is anchored in the concept of professionalization, which, according to Shiroma and Evangelista (2011, p. 129) represents a euphemistic discourse that

[…] Refers to the notions of competences, credentials, authority legitimized by specific knowledge and autonomy to exercise a profession, refers to the domain of specific knowledge, proper to a field of activity that requires specific training at an accredited institution, preferably at a higher level.

This term is configured as a strategy for adapting workers to the demands of the labor market. With these positive speech premises, the idea of teaching professionalization gains strength among the category itself. Thus, teacher training policies, forms of hiring and remuneration were justified to make them education professionals, stimulated and qualified, but in the productivity logic of doing more with less (Campos, 2005; Shiroma; Evangelista, 2011). The discussion, then, about the professional of special education involves understanding that the term used is not only in its qualification, but in its adaptation to the system. According to Shiroma and Evangelista (2004, p. 2) “The professionalization policy therefore needs to be discussed in a perspective that understands it as the result of various and perverse mechanisms of the capitalist movement and not restricted to the ways of professionalizing teachers”. And they reiterate,

According to our hypothesis, the policy of professionalization of teachers and managers, along the lines that has been implemented, aims not to increase the qualification of the teaching staff, but rather to de-intellectualize them and, thus, make them pragmatic, decreasing their capacity for conscious intervention

(Shiroma; Evangelista, 2004, p. 9).

In this sense, beyond the discussion on the term used, the special education professional refers to the discussion on ways of adapting the teacher to the public-school project. The special education professional does not express a more qualified teacher, but a teacher profile that adapts to the new demands of the proposed policy. Thus, the term professional does not represent the conception of the teacher as a subject who works with scientific knowledge at school, but one that enables the training of students along the lines that the productive system requires, with more efficiency and less cost. Michels, Shiroma and Evangelista (2011, p. 28) point out:

Why, then, is the centrality of politics in the teacher? It is certainly not to promote skills and competences in education professionals, but – it seems – to train them with a view to preparing new generations based on values that perpetuate capitalist social relations.

The discussion presented around the educator seems to be centered on the subject's subjective issues regarding their work, while it contributed to the acceptance of a teacher who is not a teacher, a teacher who has in their attributions the use of techniques, resources, and policy management, but not the teaching of specifically school knowledge.

At the same time that the approach towards the education professional requires more qualification – in the productivity molds – the title of educator is relegated to this teacher, which covers their duties beyond the classroom. This approach is remarkably similar to the discussion of teacher deintellectualization based on teacher training policies (Shiroma, 2003) that contribute to the broadening of their function while restricting them to pragmatic training (Evangelista; Triches, 2014).

Based on the reflections raised, we understand that the use of the terms teacher, professional, and educator to designate special education teachers does not represent profound differences regarding the teacher project based on inclusive perspective policies. That is, for the implementation of the school project for the 21st century, it is required a teacher who, in essence, is not a teacher. However, it is worth mentioning that the concept of teacher disseminated in specific documents of special education is the SEA teacher, which, as we see, has the same characteristics as those for basic education teachers in Brazil, with the processes of deintellectualization, teaching reconversion, intensification, and precariousness of their work.

Some Considerations

The discourse on special education in an inclusive perspective has been based on the policies of the 1990s, as we have seen, which is related to the development of capitalist society. However, at different times, the preceptors of the policy put themselves as antagonists to the previous ones, as foreseen in the National Special Education Policy (Brasil, 1994) in relation to Decree 72.425 (Brasil, 1973) that creates CENESP; or the National Guidelines for Special Education in Basic Education (Brasil, 2001c) regarding the national policy of 1994; or even The National Policy on Special Education in the perspective of School Inclusion (Brasil, 2008a) directed to the 2001 Guidelines. We can then analyze that: 1) the policy of special education in Brazil, throughout history, has not presented structural changes in its conception, but shifts incorporated according to the needs of capital accumulation; 2) the disputes present in the elaboration of special education policies are strong to the point of intending to elaborate them according to the interests of different groups within the field (disputes over resources, for politicization of the cause, for example)⁵; 3) it is part of the political discourse present in the educational policy documents to place themselves as a moment of overcoming the old/retrograde with the objective of convincing and establishing consensus.

Education is treated as an investment for the development of the country in all documents cited here. The theory of human capital and the strong relationship with technicist pedagogy continue to influence international and national educational policies, with great repercussions on policies that target special education. The document Education for Global Citizenship: preparing students for the challenges of the 21st century (Unesco, 2015, p. 2) endorses this perspective by stating that “In this context, there is a growing interest in EGC [Education for Global Citizenship], which signals a change in the role and purpose of education to build more just, peaceful, tolerant and inclusive societies”. Thus, the teacher, together with the special education teacher, is part of the strategy of consolidating an inclusive society, which includes the market, entrepreneurs, and large corporations in the restoration of capital.

The conception of a supposed school inclusion cannot be disconnected from the public-school project that we are experiencing in the 21st century. Thinking about the humanitarian slogans that permeate it does not exempt it from being intrinsically related to the proposals referred to the public school for the perpetuation of capitalist society, considering that it is incorporated in the current educational policies, composing a range of actions that characterize the school as an social assistance agency (Saviani, 2013).

The proposed assignments for the SEA teacher explain the concept of special education in an inclusive perspective when they endorse that teacher without the responsibility for teaching school knowledge to the subjects of special education. Special education in the current perspective reinforces the characteristic of a service to be offered in regular schools, which deepens the care issue, and the teacher, in this context, is another resource used. If the public-school project is anchored in the assistance bias, and with an increase of the private sector’s entry, it is not contradictory to think of a teacher who does not school, but who works with differences, who is adaptable to different contexts and situations, who seeks socialization of students.

Finally, the criticism is not based on being against school inclusion in terms of inserting the subjects of special education in regular school but seeing it in the relationships in which it is inserted, fleeing the traps of the romanticized vision that obscures such an object through its totality, that is, the criticism is based on the public-school project in which students with disabilities, TGD and high skills/giftedness are taking part. If it is in the public school that these subjects will potentially have access to knowledge, it is in this space that they must be. The issue is to fight disputes for acting in the countercurrent proposed by these educational policies.

For the inclusive perspective policy to be implemented, the special education teacher project is central. Wouldn’t a conception of a teacher who works inside the regular classroom and go along with schooling in basic education, in addition to accessibility and resources, not be a more effective strategy for the schooling of special education students?

Notes

• 1
  We chose to use the expression Special Education teacher to facilitate the understanding of the project of the teacher who works or is being trained to work with students targeting Special Education throughout history, especially after 2008 with the deepening of the inclusive perspective.
• 2
  We highlight the word, in this case, because we understand educational policy propositions as a process, which is being changed, but does not break with the project of education and public school ruled for Brazil.
• 3
  We can cite as examples the World Declaration on Education for All (Unesco, 1990) and the Salamanca Declaration on principles, policies, and practices in the area of special educational needs (Unesco, 1994).
• 4
  Target audience changed by Law 12.796, of April 4, 2013 (BRASIL, 2013).
• 5
  On this subject see: Silva (2017).

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Edited by

Editor-in-charge: Carla Vasques

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  10 Nov 2021
• Date of issue
  2021

History

• Received
  15 May 2021
• Accepted
  20 July 2021