Coproducing Rural Public Schools in Brazil

• Date: 01 September 2013
• Author: Rebecca Tarlau
• DOI: 10.1177/0032329213493753
• Published date: 01 September 2013
• Subject Matter: Articles

Politics & Society

41(3) 395 –424

© 2013 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329213493753

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Article

Coproducing Rural

Public Schools in Brazil:

Contestation, Clientelism,

and the Landless Workers’

Movement

Rebecca Tarlau

University of California, Berkeley

Abstract

The Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) has been the principal protagonist

developing an alternative educational proposal for rural public schools in Brazil.

This article analyzes the MST’s differential success implementing this proposal

in municipal and state public schools. The process is both participatory—activists

working with government officials to implement MST goals—and contentious—the

movement mobilizing support for its education initiatives through various forms of

protest. In some locations, the MST has succeeded in institutionalizing a participatory

relationship with government actors, while in other regions the MST has a more

limited presence in the schools or has been completely banned from participating.

Drawing on the concept of coproduction—the active participation of civil society

actors in the provision of public goods—the author argues that coproduction is a

joint product of high levels of social mobilization and government orientation. The

former is necessary in all cases, while the latter can take the form of either a left-

leaning or clientelistic government.

Keywords

participatory governance, social movements, coproduction, rural schooling, state-

society relations

Corresponding Author:

Rebecca Tarlau, Graduate School of Education, 5647 Tolman Hall

University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1670.

Email: becktar@gmail.com

493753PAS41310.1177/0032329213493753Politics & SocietyTarlau

research-article2013

396 Politics & Society 41(3)

On March 20, 2012, President Dilma Rousseff launched a new federal program1 that

will dedicate unprecedented funds to maintaining quality schools in the Brazilian

countryside. The educational philosophy inspiring this program, Educação do Campo

(Education of the Countryside), has gotten increasing recognition over the past fifteen

years and has been institutionalized nationally through a series of federal laws and

decrees. The major idea behind Educação do Campo is that students should not have

to commute to the city to study; rather, having quality schools that are based in stu-

dents’ rural realities, which prepare and encourage students to live and work in the

countryside, is a right for all rural citizens.

The proposal for Educação do Campo has had an unusual trajectory. Unlike most

educational reforms, which are developed and implemented by politicians and bureau-

crats on behalf of civil society, the principal protagonist developing these educational

ideas has been a controversial social movement with a combative relationship with the

Brazilian state: the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST, Landless

Workers’ Movement).2 The MST is a national social movement that has helped more

than one million women, men, and children receive land on which they can work. The

movement does this through occupations of large landed estates, in which hundreds of

landless families enter the property, set up makeshift camps, and wait until the govern-

ment gives them the legal rights to live on the land.

MST activists have also been experimenting for more than three decades with

alternative approaches to pedagogy and learning that support the movement’s vision

for small-farming and collective agricultural production. Although the MST’s educa-

tional practices were initially limited to areas of agrarian reform, in the late 1990s the

MST began to align with other rural organizations and develop a more general edu-

cational proposal. It was through these alliances that the MST’s educational practices

became recognized as a national pedagogical approach for all rural areas: Educação

do Campo.

The federal recognition for Educação do Campo is not just another example of

government actors conceding to social movement demands; it represents the national-

ization of educational initiatives that have been underway—with varying degrees of

success—at the state and local levels for more than a decade. In these diverse regional

contexts, MST activists not only propose alternative educational ideas to government

officials but also engage in the implementation of these educational practices by work-

ing with teachers and school principals, facilitating discussions with communities,

organizing teacher trainings, and writing new curriculum. However, arriving at this

form of collaboration is rarely a consensual or conflict-free process; movement activ-

ists have an openly political agenda, and must engage in contentious actions to become

participants in the educational sphere. Reactions from state and municipal govern-

ments to the MST’s educational proposal vary widely, with government officials sup-

porting the MST’s participation in certain locations while criticizing them as “guerrilla

trainers” in other regions.

What accounts for the variation in MST activists’ ability to participate in educa-

tional provision? It is the aim of this article to propose answers to this question, through

a comparison of several state and municipal school systems. These cases illustrate a