Educação Social para Crianças em Situação de Rua no Brasil

Abstract

This paper aims to present Brazilian street children and adolescents relationship the school system, as a space of social education. There are presented the modifications that happened in the public school system in Brazil, along the century XX and the repercussions in these children’s lives to the present time. The school and the needs of this target population showed divergent ways. Some Brazilian studies are reviewed, showing the formal importance of the school given by children; however they do not seem to have found any direct benefit. For that reason, the school frequency has been changed for activities that insured their primary needs. Besides, it was also mentioned by these studies, the difficulty of at risk children’s integration in the traditional school community. In this context, the “open school” appears in the Brazilian education system, with a flexible education system adapted to the routine and to the street child’s needs. These schools have as objective their students’ transition for the formal system of teaching. The school should be considered as a developmental space, in which it is reconciled its playful and its pedagogic roles. Since the children wait more of the school than just to acquire knowledge is necessary that it faces them as beings with their rights and ecologically engaged in a development context. The several elements of this school context should integrate the transformation and the learning.