In Praise of Paulista Rural Schools and “Escolas do Campo”: Sensitizations in the Perspective of (Mathematics) Educators

Abstract

The aim of this article is to raise problematizations about how schools located in rural areas of the state of São Paulo present themselves and are perceived by us, based on narratives of Mathematics teachers. We draw on narratives of teachers who experienced these schools over time, since the late 1940s, with their accounts available in three different studies (Martins, 2003; Silva, 2018; Oliveira, 2022). Our analyses indicate that these schools tend to follow the curricular model and organizational structure common to urban schools. Nevertheless, as revealed through the narratives, they appear as singular institutions, in which the typical issues of rural life emerge, sensitizing researchers’ perspectives toward a praise of such schools. The state of São Paulo has closed most of the schools once located in rural areas and does not have a specific policy for rural education. These schools are spaces where the teaching of mathematics, as well as teacher education and professional practice, have taken place—albeit under unequal conditions compared to urban schools — and where aspects of what is conventionally conceived as “school” have been subverted, embracing nuances that made sense only in that context and that have contributed to the history of Brazilian Mathematics Education for nearly 80 years. Thus, the school situated in the countryside and serving the rural population of São Paulo is praised, in the sense proposed by Larrosa (2018), not as a naïve exaltation, but as a gesture of reclaiming the dignity of these schools as spaces of experience.

Keywords:
Rural school; Mathematics Education; Teacher narratives