In the middle of a pineapple plantation, there is a secondary education and youth/adult education (EJA) classroom. To teach his classes, math teacher Nic Júnior replaces the formality of the traditional method for rural pedagogy. Instead of blackboard and chalk, he uses pineapple ploughing, cassava flour manufacturing, fishing and other activities performed by communities in the rural area of the Marajó Archipelago to earn a living. Liberal Amazon watched one of the teacher's classes to better understand his method, based on the life and work in the Boa Vista quilombola ancestral community, in the town of Salvaterra.
In the plantation of 60,000 pineapple trees, one of the communitie's main farming activities, the teacher uses parts of the textbook, replaced by practical lessons that include the daily lives of the community. When teaching mathematical operations, he uses pineapples as the visual element to add, multiply, subtract and divide. “When asked what is 3 times 10, the student takes a while to answer. But if I say a pineapple costs R$ 3 and I want to buy 10 of them, the answer comes right away.”
The teacher replaces images in the textbook with elements found in the daily life in the quilombo. Textbooks are written in the country's main centers, such as São Paulo. “Many of those who produce these books do not know marajoara life. Today, we are teaching in the pineapple plantation. I can hardly find pineapples in the textbook. And we always replace the examples provided in the book. When it shows a hippopotamus, a giraffe, animals outside the bounds of our territory, we replace it with the capybara, opossum or buffalo, animals present in the students' lives. With a simple replacement of the book's examples, we already have some improvement in learning”, says Nic Júnior.
The teacher gave another demonstration for us to see. He asked what is 50 divided by 5. Students answer 10. But the solution of the calculation took a while. The teacher asks it differently, using cassava flour manufacturing. He asks, if there are 100 liters of cassava flour and it is distributed to 10 people who produced it, how much flour each person takes? The answer comes right away. Ten liters for each of the 10 people who partook in manufacturing.
The teacher says that math is still seem as something almost impossible. “For students who struggle to understand the four mathematical operations, when I talk about cassava flour, beiju, for instance, we have better results”. With simple language, the teacher sharpens reasoning through each student's cognitive abilities. “Everyone here has worked or been in contact with flour making or pineapple plantations. The lessons are taught based on community life. It is much easier to learn”. The community has 170 families. Currently, 130 students, between children, youth and adults are studying in the quilombo. The teaching method based on the students' experiences is bringing back those who had left school.
Lessons are applied in domestic finances and farming
Lariza Conceição do Nascimento, 35, had not studied in 14 years. “I left school to raise my children. With the classes in the plantation, math became much easier to me. If I have ten pineapples for two people, I already know I will give five pineapples to each”, she says. Lariza says that, with math lessons, she learned to save money at home by calculating the necessary amount of food for her family, avoiding waste. She also uses math at her work in cassava farming and the making of cassava flour and tucupi.
Sebastiana Silva Gonçalves, 32, had not studied in 14 years either. “This is an opportunity to study right here in the countryside, because my husband and I depend on the pineapple plantation for our living.” She recounts that she always had trouble with math, but with the examples provided by the teacher in the pineapple plantations, learning becomes easier. “The teacher has been very supportive, because sometimes you feel like giving up. Here, in our place, it's easier to learn the lessons, because we deal with what we have, with our reality here,” says the student.
Jéssica Gonçalves, 14, attends the classes in the plantation and dreams with a career in law. “Here we learn more because we talk about our community's daily life, and also because the teacher talks a lot and explains well, in an easy way until we understand. When we don't understand, he keeps explaining”. She says it is easier to assimilate the mathematical operations by doing math with pineapples.
Method encourages a return to study
Lindiara Souza dos Prazeres, principal of the Boa Vista Quilombola Municipal School, says that classes on the plantation have reduced school drop-outs and have resulted in improved learning, especially among adult students who dropped out of school and have returned to school after many years. She explains that in the classes held in the quilombo, the students feel welcome in their place of living. “Many have families and don't have anyone to look after the children, besides not having transport to commute to the school in the city," she says.
The principal also states that the teaching and learning method developed by the teacher incentivizes students to return to the classroom. “Working with daily life methods allows the student to absorb the content of the class in a way that makes it easier to understand. Many Adult Education students had been out of school for a long time, and many of those in the final years of primary school had trouble learning the course, and through the method the teacher uses, the student's interest in being in class is aroused, which is why there has been a very large reduction in dropouts and the completion (of studies) of many who were at a standstill," says the teacher.
Native teachers are in the frontlines
The complexity of the Marajoara territory is both a complicating factor and a facilitator in the educational process of children, youth and adults. Marajó is the largest river-sea island in the world. At around 50,000 km², it is similar in size to Switzerland, which is almost the same area size. A place full of attributes and unique touristic wealth, but with difficult access to public services. For that reason, teachers born and raised in the island lead rural education.
In the island, nature rules. The smell of the sea, the vegetation that alternates between flooded Marajoara fields in winter and the green density of the Amazon rainforest. On the other hand, the island has one of the lowest human development indices (HDI) in Brazil, according to the Atlas of Human Development (based on the IBGE - Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics Censuses of 1991, 2000 and 2010). But while basic health, sanitation and education services are lacking, the way of life of the people of Marajó is striking. The island's way of life is impressive. Marajó has unique cultural and biological diversity.
Due to the wealth in socio-biodiversity, marajoara educators, such as teacher Nic Júnior, are in the front lines within the communities, as they have a direct relation to nature and the cultural values of Marajó. “The teachers in these rural schools take care of the island's education," says Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA) professor Salomão Hage, who has a PhD in education from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP) and leads the Study and Research Group on Rural Education in the Amazon (Geperuaz).
The professor believes that with these initiatives the people of Marajó are occupying their spaces. “We have to talk about poverty, but also the wealth in biodiversity and socio-biodiversity, the local knowledge”. “We have to put an end to the idea of 'hard-to-reach communities' when we talk about the peoples of the rural areas, the rivers and the forests of the Amazon region. If there is a problem with accessibility, it's because the government does not invest in it," says Salomão Hage.
Between 2000 and 2022, 6.987 rural schools in Pará were closed
Professor Salomão Hage states that teachers face hardships in rural teaching due to the precariousness of the schools, with a lack of teachers, meals and many schools closing. According to a report by the Fórum Paraense de Educação no Campo, an organization fighting to ensure the right of the people of rural, river and forests areas to free, personalized and in-person public education in their territories, 6,987 rural schools were closed in Pará between 2000 and 2022. The town of Afuá, in Marajó, appears in the report with the highest drop: 119 schools closed between 2021 and 2022.
“Rural education, with examples of teachers and act directly in the communities, even with precarity in the schools, represents possibilities for these peoples to exist and re-exist in these spaces”, says Salomão Hage.
According to him, many are substitute teachers and rely on local political authorities. “Rural people are not victims. The rural, fluvial and forest territories are rich in biodiversity, they are diverse. Marajó is an example of this. It is not just the bio, but the socio. That is also wealth.”
The professor reminds us that the peoples are rich in bio and socio-biodiversity and belong to an ancestral culture. “They have a certain knowledge that is not scientific. But a knowledge that has legitimacy for their coexistence in these spaces. They protect these territories. Where they are, there are protected areas and protected territories. This is the only reason we still have the Amazon rainforest”, he concludes.
