Direito à educação de pessoas com transtorno do espectro do autismo: normas das unidades federativas brasileiras

Abstract

The Brazilian legal system establishes the norms of social conduct based on the fundamental rights guaranteed in the Federal Constitution (CF) (Brazil, 1988). One of the constitutional guarantees is equality, which has two aspects: formal equality, meaning everyone is equal before the law, and substantive equality, which is how the norm operates in practice, meaning the state promotes equal opportunities. Thus, even though individuals should be formally equal in practice, to ensure this equality, specific measures need to be created for certain groups of people. This occurs through the implementation of political-normative documents that are not generalist but produce content that considers the differences existing among individuals. Among the different social groups, we have people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), who are legally considered Persons with Disabilities (PWD), and due to their specific needs, sometimes require legal support to access their rights. The CF establishes several social rights that must be provided to all without distinction, among which education stands out, constituting both a right and a duty of the State and the family. However, access to education for PWD is a right that has been very slowly achieved because it implies not only access but also conditions for learning. In this sense, the global movement for inclusion through special education emerges. Educational opportunities have been expanded with the implementation of specific norms at the federal level that guarantee necessary adaptations. According to the CF, each federative entity is responsible for part of Brazilian education and must ensure that the education of PWD is an integral part of the educational system within their jurisdiction. In this prism, this doctoral thesis aims to systematize the political-normative documents of the federative units in force in Brazil in 2022, dealing with issues related to people with ASD, in order to identify and analyze which of them bring mechanisms to guarantee access to education and problematize their content, verifying advances and potentials present in these documents. The methodological procedures used to develop this research were observed from the concepts of quantitative and qualitative research approaches. For data collection, documentary research was chosen from primary sources, in this case, laws, here referred to as political-normative documents. The methodological path was: the survey of legislation through the websites of the Civil House and/or Legislative Assembly of each federative unit; data storage; mapping, categorization, and systematization of the documents collected through information such as year of implementation, federative unit, region of the country, norm's summary, thematic categorization, and definition of norms for analysis. 505 norms were mapped and systematized, of which 59 contain some content related to education. With the cataloged information, it is possible to conclude that, in general terms, there are many political-normative documents for people with ASD. However, it is noted that several norms are limited to repeating the same content but are established in different federative units. Therefore, we have many generic legal documents that establish guidelines and rights, but regarding education, the norms contain very similar texts, established in different federative units, and in general are only guidelines without indicating ways of realization and implementation. Therefore, we do not have specific norms that effectively guarantee rights. This large number of norms raised is not sufficient, as there are many, but they are not specific, so they are insufficient; it is not about a large or small quantity, but rather, many that say little.