{"id":3255,"date":"2016-09-26T02:00:31","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T02:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=3255"},"modified":"2017-01-24T22:10:21","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T22:10:21","slug":"3255","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=3255","title":{"rendered":"HOMESCHOOLING IN BRAZIL: Principles & Legalization Attempts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:<\/b>\u00a0Luciane Muniz Ribeiro\u00a0<\/b>Barbosa, “An Overview of the Homeschooling in Brazil: Analysis of Its Principles and Attempts of Legalization.” Open Journal of Social Sciences<\/em>, 4, No. 4 (2016), 203-211.\u00a0[Article<\/a>]<\/p>\n

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Summary:\u00a0<\/b>Luciane Muniz Ribeiro\u00a0Barbosa<\/a>\u00a0is a professor in the Department of Human Sciences and Education<\/a> at the\u00a0Universidade Federal de S\u00e3o Carlos<\/a>. In this article she analyzes the underpinnings of the homeschooling movement in Brazil and its attempts at legalization.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Barbosa first addresses the legality of homeschooling in Brazil. In short, homeschooling is illegal\u00a0because of a compulsory education law that requires registration and attendance at a school from the ages of 4 to 17. Nevertheless,\u00a0it is estimated by the Associac\u0327a\u0303o Nacional de Educac\u0327a\u0303o Domiciliar<\/a> (Home Education National Association)<\/em> that around 2,500 families homeschool their children in spite of the law. In contrast to some countries that have never addressed homeschooling in court, a family in Brazil was taken to court over their desire to homeschool in 2001. They lost in the Supreme Court, and they were forced to enroll their children in school. In more recent cases, however, local authorities appear to be becoming more lenient and less unified throughout the country.<\/p>\n

There have been eight\u00a0attempts since 1994 to either pass a bill or a constitutional amendment that would legalize homeschooling. These efforts have not come to fruition, mostly because there\u00a0is a belief that school is the best way to socialize and teach citizenship.\u00a0In an effort to show the controversy, Barbosa\u00a0cites the beliefs of homeschooling advocates as well as opponents, concluding that there is still some work to do to determine the socialization outcomes of homeschooling. She believes that homeschoolers have an alternate vision of citizenship that may not be bad, but it is different from the prevailing thoughts in society.<\/p>\n

Next, Barbosa looks at a possible connection between the rise of homeschooling and the new institutionalism theory<\/a>. Throughout the 20th century, education became more standardized and bureaucratized. For example, governments imposed standardized requisites for high school diplomas and teacher certification. However, some people are opposed to this standardized bureaucracy. Barbosa posits that the rise of the homeschooling movement grew (at least partially) from people fleeing this overly-standardized education. However, she also notes that homeschooling\u00a0is growing a market of curriculums and other materials.\u00a0According to the new institutionalism theory, institutions (like schools)\u00a0legitimize themselves\u00a0through things like a market of materials. In essence, by making homeschooling more formal (through laws, curriculums, conferences, etc.), homeschoolers are playing into the same dynamics of standardization that Barbosa believes were at the origin of the movement.<\/p>\n

Looking at\u00a0the movement from a different perspective, Barbosa next considers whether homeschooling might be an extreme form of concerted cultivation<\/a>. Concerted cultivation is a parenting style common among middle and upper-class families in which children’s lives are structured in order to teach them desired life skills. One consequence of this trend is that some parents\u00a0have developed a sense of entitlement to direct their children’s education. According to Barbosa, this concerted cultivation helped give rise to the school choice movement, of which homeschooling is a part. She calls homeschooling an extreme form of concerted cultivation because in homeschooling, parents have moved from trying to influence teachers and schools to becoming the teachers themselves. Homeschooling parents, like others in the school-choice movement, claim to know what is best for their children.<\/p>\n

Returning to Brazil, Barbosa claims that Brazilian homeschoolers are, “middle-class parents advocating for their right and responsibility to act and decide about the best education for their children” (p. 208). Rather than religious or pedagogical beliefs, she claims that these parents are most influenced by concerted cultivation and their perceived right to direct the education of their children. Before wrapping up, Barbosa makes the observation that one obstacle that homeschooling will have to overcome in order to gain legal recognition in Brazil is that it is perceived as an\u00a0upper-class privilege in a country that is very aware of its social and economic inequalities.<\/p>\n

Appraisal:\u00a0<\/b>Barbosa concerns herself more with the origin of the homeschooling movement in general than with the movement in Brazil. However, her discussion of concerted cultivation does bring up some interesting thoughts about the development of homeschooling in places like Brazil and Latin America. If concerted cultivation is a movement primarily among the middle- and upper-classes, how do the lower-classes feel about these wealthier parents directing their children’s education, and how does that affect the spread of the homeschooling movement in countries such as Brazil that face a great deal of economic inequality? Barbosa only touches on it briefly, but part of the reason that homeschooling is looked at as an upper-class phenomenon in Brazil is because in the past, members of the upper-class were usually educated at home.\u00a0Vasconcelos (2013)<\/a>\u00a0provides a helpful look into\u00a0Brazil’s past experiences with domestic education and considers how that perception of homeschooling might linger today.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/strong>: The views expressed in reviews are not the official views of ICHER or of its members. For more information about ICHER\u2019s Reviews, please see the \u00abAbout these Reviews\u00bb Section.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Record:\u00a0Luciane Muniz Ribeiro\u00a0Barbosa, “An Overview of the Homeschooling in Brazil: Analysis of Its Principles and Attempts of Legalization.” Open Journal of Social Sciences, 4, No. 4 (2016), 203-211.\u00a0[Article] Summary:\u00a0Luciane Muniz Ribeiro\u00a0Barbosa\u00a0is a professor in the Department of Human Sciences and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1599,883,1597,1600,1598],"class_list":["post-3255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-associacao-nacional-de-educacao-domiciliar","tag-brazil","tag-luciane-muniz-ribeiro-barbosa","tag-new-institutionalism-theory","tag-universidade-federal-de-sao-carlos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3255"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3571,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3255\/revisions\/3571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}