Jovens da agricultura familiar de Rubiataba-GO: processos educativos e perspectivas de reprodução social

Abstract

This study on young people in family farming in Rubiataba, Goiás, and the educational processes and perspectives of social reproduction, is a doctoral thesis in the field of research into Education, Society and Culture of the Post-graduate studies in Education Program at the Pontifical Catholic University of Goiás. It set out to analyze the conditions and environment of the children of family farmers in the region of Baixa Verde, municipality of Rubiataba, Goiás, in order to understand young people at the heart of the mechanisms of reproduction of the social group to which they belong. To do so, it investigated their feelings about their way of being young people, the way of life and work of their parents, the formal education system, the contribution of formation institutions and leisure time and how they organize their projects for professional fulfillment. Questionnaires were distributed to collect data and other techniques, such as semistructured interviews and asystematic observation, were also used. The adolescent children of family farmers constitutes a social category which arises out of the socialization of the process of family farming whose projects are affected by the expansion of capitalism in the countryside which disregards the wishes and designs of the young, to stay on and earn their living there. They participate in family units of agricultural production in which management, work, property, the institution of knowledge, norms and the values of the family universe predominate. Their families participated in the migration process of the 1940s and 1960s, the so-called March to the West, have settled in the region until today consolidating their projects of creating, maintaining and reproducing the agricultural model called family farming, but who are witnessing a decline in their children s hopes of remaining on in the countryside and, consequently, the future of their properties and cultural heritage. Participating in a school education, subordinated to the capitalist system, young people are turning their interests and projects towards opportunities for study and work in the towns and cities. Soil degradation and the fact that the small farms provide no room for expansion limit the possibilities for young people to take over farming from their parents, and are obstacles in the way of the social reproduction of family farming.