THE SOCIOPOLITICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE CENECIST SCHOOLS: A COMMUNITY SCHOOL

Abstract

In the area of education, there was an intense mobilization in the 1940s in the form of campaigns embalmed by the “enthusiasm for education” movement. In this context, the Poor Gymnasium Campaign (1943), today the National Community Schools Campaign (CNEC in Portuguese), emerged as a movement to offer education to the needy population, whose founders were imbued with ideas linked to “enthusiasm for education”. In this perspective, we will seek to analyze the sociopolitical and pedagogical foundations of Cenecist schools, particularly in the process of renaming, from the National Free Teaching Campaign to the National Community School Campaign. For a better understanding of this name change, it is essential to discuss the concept of community. Therefore, we will analyze the 1960s, during which period Community Development (DC) was associated with the concept of community as a paradigm of progress and participation, as stated by Pagaza (1997). This developmental discourse is now assumed by CNEC. Thus, the sociopolitical and pedagogical foundations of the Cenecist schools were based on voluntary cooperation, the result of community interaction. The agents of this process would be leaders who should stimulate change through their own examples, the realization of their own lives, and the relationships they would establish with others.