Infância, cidadania e educação: um estudo da integração das creches comunitárias ao sistema municipal de ensino do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The present study intends to investigate de integration of commnunitary nurseries to the public education system in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, following the legal rules settled by the Federal Constitution of 1988, which recognizes the social rights of early childhood, and the Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional of 1996, which stablishes nursery care as a stage of basic education. The study pursues three main objetives, each of them presented in one chapter: to characterize the historical and social process of infancy and the evolution of infancy public policies in Brazil; to analyse these policies in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, identifying local characteristics of public nursery care and communitary nurseries; and identify the constraints on the ongoing process of integration of communitary nurseries to the public education system. The empirical investigation adopted the case study to analyse the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, using interviews with public agents in charge of Social Assistance and Education (sectors respectively responsible for communitary nurseries before and after the integration), directors and professionals of public and communitary nurseries. Also investigated official documents, records of the communities enrolled and data on social and economical situation of the municipality. The study demonstrates that despite important improvements, especially on teaching procedures, communitary nurseries remain not integrated to the public basic education system in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, even though integration is already officially concluded. Communitary nurseries still follow different rules, get different money and different attention from public education managers. Considering that communitary nurseries attend mainly poor chidren from poor communities, it can be concluded that remains the segmentation whitin the public education system, which still have not been able to guarantee citizenship for all children.