Democracy and education in the Federal Constitution in LDB and PNE: community participation in school

Abstract

To emphasize the importance of community participation in educational institution as one of the devices that contributes to democracy in education, this text presents, in its beginning, a discussion that involves the meaning of democratic education in different historical periods in Brazil, pointing out the advances obtained from what was laid out on the subject in legal norms. In this discussion, the presence of this theme is contextualized in the Federal Constitution of 1988, in the Education Law of 1996 and in the National Education Plan of 2014. Since then, community participation in school management is discussed, based on a discussion involving different types and levels of participation. We observed that the community can participate in school management in various ways: from those imposed by the state (creation of collegiate bodies, collective work and periodic plans schedule, and others) to the instituting forms created in the very school routine. Then the sense of participation is put in place, i.e., what motivates it, seeking to temporarily close the text with arguments that demonstrate the need for the school community to conquer other spaces and levels of participation. In this understanding, participation may have its beginning from the mechanisms established by the State, but can be extended with the deepening of its initial level and the establishment of other forms of community involvement with the management.