Taking research with its roots: restructuring schools in the Brazilian landless workers' movement upon the principles of a political ecology of education

David Meek

doi:10.2458/v22i1.21116

Abstract

How does education mediate the relationship between the co-production of environmental knowledge, and the social reproduction of an alternative society? This article draws upon a political ecology of education framework to analyze how schools advance alternative land management strategies and forms of environmental knowledge. Schools catering to grassroots movements can actualize their emancipatory objectives by institutionalizing hybridized conceptions of educational space-time. This article focuses on a vocational high school in a settlement of the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement. It analyzes a document known as a 'political pedagogical project' (PPP) which details the identity of the school and how it sees itself as a tool for social and environmental justice. Through an analysis of this PPP, my article explores how the school seeks to educate students to critically reflect upon the relationships between political economic processes and landscape change. The PPP also encourages students to be active participants in the development of a regional agroecological science, and cooperative material relations. From a political ecology of education perspective, activist schools are important sites for the coproduction of environmental knowledge and material relations. They have the potential to help students learn critically about the linkages between power, political economy, and land management.Keywords: Landless Workers Movement; political ecology of education; hybridity, political pedagogical project, agroecology

Highlights

A central concern within political ecology is the politics of environmental knowledge (Biersack and Greenberg 2006; Bryant 1997; Forsyth 2003; Robbins 2004; Zimmerer and Basset 2003)
From a political ecology of education perspective, knowledge production is directly influenced by the school's ideology and the history of its political economic landscape
This collective ideology shapes how students come to 'understand the world.' At the IFPA-CRMB students are engaged in the process of developing a regional agroecological science, one forged through hybridization of the school and home community's space-time, and the accompanying traditional and academic forms of knowledge that characterize these spaces

Summary

Introduction

A central concern within political ecology is the politics of environmental knowledge (Biersack and Greenberg 2006; Bryant 1997; Forsyth 2003; Robbins 2004; Zimmerer and Basset 2003). The political ecology of education (PEoE) framework treats education as an umbrella concept that encompasses a broad range of pedagogical opportunities—from tacit to formal learning (Baker et al 2002; Livingstone 2006; Marsick et al 2009) This perspective holds that education is not politically, economically, and ecologically neutral, but instead a central arena for the. Schools are a network of interrelations between environmental histories, ecological processes, spatiotemporal contexts, economic resources, curricula, teaching styles, and political ideology. I explore how the MST uses education to articulate a new vision of material production and nature-society relations This is followed by a site description of the Federal Institute of Pará, Rural Campus of Marabá (IFPA-CRMB). The remainder of the article analyzes the IFPA-CRMB's Political and Pedagogical Project (Projeto Político Pedagógico or PPP), which is an institutional plan for creating a transformative educational institution

Hybridized schools and the reproduction of socionature

Contesting the concentration of land and knowledge

The ongoing struggle for rural education

Conclusion