GENERAL LANDSCAPE OF AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS AFTER THE REFORM OF PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION (1997-2003)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research aims to examine the situation of Brazilian technical teaching after the Reform of Professional Education (REP) happened during the period of the validity of Decree number 2,208/97. The base of this analyze is the general background of agricultural schools which went through intense changes in the period of 1997 to 2003. Besides literature research and the analyze of various documents that guided the Reform, some data used in this article came from an empirical investigation. It brought essentially qualitative information, in which eight teachers from two different Federal Agricultural Schools visited by the researcher responded a preoriented questionaire. The responses suggest that both, teachers and pupils had to adhere the Reform of Professional Education without an appropriate debate inside the schools. Changes such as the separation between high school and technical education, the adoption of curriculum under the form of professionalizing modules and the use of professional skills in the organization of subjects brought negative impacts to the agricultural schools, such as the fragmentation of the professional formation or the reduction of quantity of hours of practical classes. Actually the changes the Reform caused were sufficient to dismount a whole organization that historically had been given the federal agricultural schools network the status of excellency  centers in professional teaching.