The goal is to contribute to an agenda in schools that focuses on conserving biomes.
The Institute for Society, Population and Nature (ISPN) is launching the publication “Education for the Conservation of the Cerrado: Challenges and Opportunities for Socio-biodiversity Products”. The material points out that, in the Cerrado, there are 56 Family Educational Centers for Alternating Training (Ceffas) with potential for curricular updating in the approach to sustainable landscapes. Agroecology is present in the Training Plans and Political Pedagogical Projects in 78% of these schools. The research was carried out by Agroecology Technologist Marccella Baerte.
The publication is a product of the Cerrado Resilient Project (CERES), in partnership with WWF (Brazil, Paraguay and the Netherlands), with support from the European Union, and can be viewed in its entirety here. The launch was also the subject of the Canto da Coruja Comunidade podcast, available for listening here.
In an interview with the audio program, Isabel Figueiredo, coordinator of the Cerrado and Caatinga Program at ISPN, highlights that the document shows that Family Agricultural Schools are a space with enormous potential for working on issues related to the Cerrado.
“That’s where the students who live in the Cerrado are, who are the children of farmers, who belong to traditional communities. These schools have not yet reached their full potential to discuss the topic of the Cerrado and its various possibilities for generating income, work, and opportunities for young people,” she points out. “There is still much room for improvement. The EFAS (Environmental Education Schools) are the gateway to environmental education, awareness, and increasing the number of extractivists. They are the ones who will make our dream of conservation through sustainable use a reality,” she comments.
Marleide Alves, from the Coordination of the Union of Associations of Family Agricultural Schools of Maranhão, emphasizes the importance of the special pedagogy of these spaces. “We work with the pedagogy of alternation, where we combine school time and community time. We work with all the subjects of the core curriculum and also the diversified subjects, thus working towards the integral formation of our students,” she explains.
Alternating pedagogy is a pedagogical proposal that organizes education in different spaces and times, alternating between activities within educational centers and outside of school, that is, in the young person's socio-professional environment (family property or community, settlement, quilombo, indigenous village, or even other protected areas or areas threatened by the arrival of agribusiness).
There are many experiences of young students who, in the context of alternating between school and the community, serve as a source of information on best agricultural practices for their families and local farmers (Learn more).