Discursos medicalizantes na educação infantil: Problematizações em torno da educação especial

Abstract

This article is the result of a master’s dissertation study that brings medicalizing discoursesinto the daily lives of early childhood education as a central issue, and how special education iscaptured by such discourses. By medicalization we mean the process of artificially transforming social,historical and political issues into medical issues. The text addresses the notion of discourse forFoucault as an essential concept, bringing questions about normalization, subjectivation and knowledge//power relations. In order to discuss the notion of medicalization, we brought authors who defenddifferent theories, such as Moyses and Collares, who are Brazilian references. This paper consists ofa case study that uses the principles of cartography as a tool, and its research plan was a MunicipalCenter for Early Childhood Education of the Municipality of Vitoria, ES, Brazil. The theoreticalinvestigative path resulted in two problematization movements: the first one on the medicalization ofsupposed disorders/disabilities, and the second one on the medicalization of the disability condition.The analysis of these movements demonstrates how the medicalization of childhood occurs despitethe consumption of medicines, both through the creation of labels, as well as through the medicalrepresentation present in the referrals for special education of children who deviate from the standards.