“Ainda não sei ler e escrever”: um estudo sobre o processo de leitura e escrita nas escolas indígenas de Dourados, MS

Abstract

Studies on the process of literacy among indigenous students have aroused discussion and reflection in the academic community, because in his speeches, indigenous teachers express concern about the significant number of students who reach the end of elementary school unable to read and write. In this perspective, this Master’s Dissertation aims to understand the social and cultural practices involved in the areas of reading and writing of indigenous students deemed as literacy failure. The specific objectives focused: Know the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of literacy and literacy in social perspective, to identify, from the teachers' speech, which are representations of the concepts "learning disability" and reading and writing in cultural perspective indigenous, analyze school performance of students and their cultural and social relations. This is an ethnographic research anchored in Cultural Studies and Literacy Studies. As a result of this research it was found that indigenous teachers continue to develop reading and writing as a form of progress, the benefits for themselves and their community. This demonstrates the autonomous model of literacy installed in school as well as the literacy myth that only those who can excel are illuminated; for they have a guaranteed "future." It was found also that alphabetization is centered on recognition of written codes, in pedagogization of literacy, with little to none appreciation of the students’ cultural knowledge, their culture, and their daily lives. It was observed in the activities proposed to students, a wealth of stories of creativity, cultural knowledge, not only of their culture, but the other culture, in this case by the proximity of non-indigenous groups. It is hoped that the results of this research contribute to launching of new views on alphabetization, alphabetism, and literacy as social and cultural practices, so that the students deemed as reading and writing failures, are not stigmatized and seen as those who fail to " lead man to the moon," but are interpreted with diverse meaning, recognizing their cultural and social skills in the plurality of literacy.