As políticas públicas educacionais de prevenção e erradicação do trabalho infantil nas lavouras de tabaco no Vale do Rio Pardo.

Abstract

The present paper has as its theme educational public policies for prevention and eradication of child labor in rural areas. It’s known that this form of exploitation, specifically in agriculture, is the one with the largest number of working children and teenagers in the world, also being a reality in Brazil, which may be one of the main reasons for the difficulty of preventing and eradicating child labor, considering that it hides itself among the crops of small farms under a family economy system in Rio Pardo Valley, which delimits the presented theme in order to solve the following problem: what are and how educational public policies are applied to assist in prevention and eradication of child labor in rural areas producing tobacco in Rio Pardo Valley? The study was conducted through deductive-hypothetical approach and historical procedures and case study, in ways to reach its general objetive, identifying which are and how the educational public policies for child labor prevention and eradication are applied in the State, and if those are applied in Rio Pardo’s rural areas, being performed a research through questionnaires applied at the Regional Coordination Offices of Education and Municipal Departments of Education that serve the counties of Rio Pardo Valley, since Rio Grande do Sul is tobacco’s largest producer in Brazil, and thus, has a high index of child labor in agriculture. Furthermore, it was proved to be necessary to first approach the historical evolution of children and teenagers’ rights until the child labor culture, the myths behind it and its insertion into agriculture through tobacco’s production, followed by an analysis of public policies through an approach of Brazil’s education policy, and its efforts to prevent and eradicate rural child labor, considering the specifics that education requires in rural areas, and finally, through the result obtained in the field research, it was analyzed the limitation of educational public policies in rural areas, seeking to understand how education works in actions that may contribute to the prevention and eradication of child labor in this area, considering that in rural areas there’s no adequate supply of alternatives so parents don’t see themselves forced to take their children to the crops. Finally, the study reviewed the hypotheses, resulting in two fully and one partially confirmed. Thus, the results from the research concluded that there is, in fact, limitations in educational public policies offered in rural areas of the counties of Rio Pardo Valley that contribute in the prevention and eradication of child labor, also concluded that there’s a deficiency in the official data about child labor index, something that prevents the identification of the sectors with the highest rates of child labor, hindering thus, both prevention and eradication of this very violent form of exploitation of children and teenagers, individuals that should have absolut priority.