Special Education from/in the Countryside: neoliberal offensives and processes of school in/exclusion

Abstract

The right to schooling of peasants with disabilities, global developmental disorders and high abilities/giftedness has figured in Brazilian political-normative documents, especially in the last two decades. In this direction, this text aims to strain, in the context of neoliberal governmentality, the processes of in/exclusion at the interfaces of Special Education and Rural Education, particularly with regard to the provision of schooling and specialized educational assistance (SEA) to peasant populations. Therefore, a qualitative-quantitative research was carried out, with document and bibliographic review, as well as a microdata collection from the School Census of Basic Education, from the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira, in the years of 2008, 2014 and 2020. The results indicate: the growth trend in enrollments of this public; the flow of students who leave the countryside to be educated in the urban area; schools closing in rural areas; the insufficiency of multifunctional resource rooms and SEA at rural schools. Thus, the study problematizes how neoliberal governmentality can, from the movements of school in/exclusion of peasants with disabilities, global development disorders and high skills/giftedness, assume an urban-centric aspect and intensify the dismantling of a Special Education from/in the Countryside.