Estudantes com deficiência intelectual na Educação de Jovens e Adultos Especial: o contexto de Minas Gerais (2008-2019)

Abstract

This survey aims to investigate the school treatment given to students with intellectual disabilities in Special Youth and Adult Education (known in Brazil by the Portuguese acronym, EJA) in Minas Gerais, from 2008 to 2019, based on the microdata of the School Census of Basic Education disclosed by National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (known in Brazil by the Portuguese acronym, INEP). The specific goals consist of analyzing the enrollment of Special Needs Education students inserted at EJA, according to the type of schooling; at Special EJA, verifying the enrollment of students with intellectual disabilities, in order to identify their profile according to gender, color/race, age group and stage of education. It also pursued to investigate the school treatment given to students with intellectual disabilities, according to the school administrative dependency, private school category, dependency on the agreement with the State and location. Over time, the Special Needs Education and the Youth and Adult Education have not been treated politically and administratively with effective investment actions. The education for people with disabilities was carried out through their segregation in institutes and special classes, while the Youth and Adult Education was linked to assistance and compensatory projects, which aimed only the literacy. Over the last decades, new directions have occurred in public policies, which have come to be guided by an inclusive perspective, in light of the guarantee of the right to Education for people with disabilities. In this aspect, the right to Education for students with disabilities has been expanded and, currently, the increment of enrollments is perceived, and, statistically, the intellectual disabilities correspond to the largest category. Despite this expansion, many students remain in segregated teaching spaces, far from scientific knowledge and a pedagogical proposal that contributes to their learning and development. In this context, the present study was guided by the thesis of the unity between the dimensions of quality and quantity, having as theoretical support the perspective of the Marxist dialectic, and the IBM SPSS software was used for the processing and treatment of School Census microdata. The investigation results indicate the prevalence of enrollment at regular EJA. At Special EJA, it was perceived the predominance of students with intellectual disabilities over other students from Special Education, the majority being male and white. Furthermore, at Special EJA there is a concentration of enrollments of students with intellectual disabilities in initial stages, which are in the lower ages, indicating the phenomenon of “juvenilization” of EJA. It is also noted that most enrollments are concentrated in private institutions, with philanthropy prevalence, whose agreement with the State is mostly municipal and state based. In this way, an expansion of enrollment of students with disabilities at EJA can be seen, demonstrating that such type of education has become another space linked to Special Education. For this reason, it is emphasized the need for more researches to contribute with the knowledge production about students with intellectual disabilities at EJA, providing the elaboration of indicators that are able to guide the conceptions of public policies in the area of Education.