Limites e possibilidades do PRONATEC como ação governamental de ampliação da Educação Profissional no Brasil: uma análise a partir da experiência do IFRJ

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the conception of the democratization of the Professional Education implemented by Programa Nacional de Acesso ao EnsinoTécnico e Emprego (Pronatec). We present the ideological political theories of this program based on the transformations occurred in the work world and the training of workers, beginning with the structural crisis of the capital. The PRONATEC proposes to democratize the offering of the Professional Education by means of an institutional arrangement which basis is the System S, the private “initiative” and the institutions of the Rede Federal de Educação Profissional e Tecnológica. In order to understand the political pedagogy of this Program, we took as our empiric reference one of the institutions that belongs to the Rede Federal de Educação Profissional, Científica e Tecnológica: the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologiado Rio de Janeiro (IFRJ). We question whether the entrance of students who belong to lower classes by means of PRONATEC is a precarious insertion within an implicit discrimination or it represents a real gain for the working class. Besides we reflect upon the limits and possibilities of a real process of democratization in the Professional Educational in a capitalist society. This is a basic research with a qualitative analysis and an explanatory character which uses questionnaires, interviews, primary resources analysis and observation as tools for collecting data. It was possible to see that the entrance of the students in the IFRJ by means of PRONATEC is an “excluded inclusion”, as the government creates a parallel structure for these students, based on temporary work deals and an improvised pedagogical and administrative organization. In addition, this Program does not increase the structure of IFRJ, otherwise, it increases the distance between general education and professional education for the lower classes due to the intention to raise schooling. We conclude that there is not a concrete possibility of democratization of the access to the technical professional knowledge in a capitalist society under the perspective of the emancipation of the working class. However, governmental programs like PRONATEC constitute important dispute spaces of hegemony for the organization and the workers fight for the quality of public education, since they show the limits and contradictions of a “society of classes” to promote a real democratization of the technical professional knowledge.