Contextos político e educacional no Campus Natal – Central do Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio Grande do Norte: da ETFRN ao IFRN, passando pelo CEFET/RN

Abstract

The present work is the product of a bibliographical research and documentary analysis that had as main objective to analyze the political and educational contexts in the Campus Natal - Central of the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Norte (CNat-IFRN), when of the publication of Law No. 11,892 of December 29, 2008. Taking the final phase of the military dictatorship and the transition to democracy as an initial reference, the text goes through three institutions, from the Federal Technical School of Rio Grande do Norte (ETFRN) to Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Norte (IFRN), through the Federal Center for Technological Education (CEFET-RN). As specific objectives the work sought to make a brief historical rescue of the professional education in Brazil; analyze the background to the creation of the Federal Institutes and evaluate their impacts on CNat-IFRN. It discusses the political context of the period in which the Federal Institutes are created and their constant disputes over the country's directions, which are reflected in educational policy permeated by discontinuities in its orientation and legislation. With the victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the new government (2003-2010) remained in an unstable balance between the neoliberal policies established in Brazil in the 1990s and its historical commitments, especially since the foundation (1980) and the formulation of the democratic and popular program of the Workers' Party in 1987. Once the objectives of the work have been fulfilled, it can be said that the conjuncture that involves the transition from ETFRN to the IFRN is marked by crises and political disputes. Crisis of the neoliberal model of economic and ideological domination at the international level and of deep political disputes in the country. The results indicate that, despite the positivity of the expansion of the Federal Network, as of 2003, there was no new institutionality that would alter the structural duality between propaedeutic education and professional education in the country, with the challenge of CNat-IFRN deepen their professional training, at various levels, in a more permanent dialogue with the state high school network of Rio Grande do Norte.