Trajetória da educação especial no Brasil, seus desdobramentos no estado do Paraná e o caso da Escola Novo Horizonte no município de Corbélia - PR

Abstract

This master's dissertation explores the trajectory of Special Education in Brazil, its developments in the state of Paraná and the case of the Novo Horizonte School, run by the Association of Parents and Friends of People with Disabilities (APAE), in the municipality of Corbélia - PR. The aim was to analyze the historical, economic, political, and social struggle contexts that permeated the trajectory of the first initiatives to offer education to people with disabilities in Brazil, in the state of Paraná and the municipality of Corbélia - PR, restricting itself, in the latter two, to the education offered by the schools maintained by APAE. The discussions and actions of civil society along these trajectories were retrieved, as well as the official negotiations that strengthened and institutionalized Specialized Educational Assistance (AEE, acronym in Portuguese) at the federal, state, and municipal levels. To comply with the proposal, the research was based on the method of historical-dialectical materialism, using the cultural-historical approach, especially in Vygotsky's studies on Special Education, concerning Volume Five: Fundamentals of Defectology, from the author's Complete Works, as well as Brazilian education theorists such as Saviani, Jannuzzi, Caiado, Cury, Buffa, Silveira Bueno, and others. In this sense, the study is characterized as bibliographical research linked to the technique of documentary analysis. The bibliographical research made it possible to identify the elements that supported the analysis of the theme. The documentary analysis examined official documents issued through laws, decrees, and resolutions at the federal and state level - the Paraná State Department of Education (SEED - PR), the Paraná State Education Council (CEE - PR) - and those signed by the Cascavel Regional Education Center (Núcleo Regional de Educação de Cascavel - PR). The discussions raised in this research focused on the history of specialized schools, with greater emphasis on those maintained by APAEs, as well as the provision of these services in parallel to those offered in the regular school system. From this perspective, we analyzed the elements that highlighted the slowness of official initiatives in the face of the demands of Special Education at the time and the importance of the institutions involved in this context, which, although they were set up separately from ordinary public education, provided specialized educational services and care to those who were not assisted by the ordinary educational system. Finally, based on the determinants present in the trajectory of the specialized institutions in the aforementioned contexts, we compiled the history of the current Novo Horizonte School - Early Childhood Education and Elementary Education, in the Special Education modality - as an institution founded and maintained by the Corbelian civil initiative, and its importance and social relevance in the municipality from its foundation to the present day, and, based on this, the counterpoint of the controversies of an institution that was born out of the struggle for the rights of people with disabilities, and which has managed to make a lot of progress in these aspects throughout Brazilian history, but, it seems, does not want to take the struggle forward and effectively hold the state and social policies responsible in this endeavor. It seems that there is a real interest in continuing as a private philanthropic institution, with guaranteed access toxii state funds and, inevitably, still dependent on benevolence and organized civil initiative.