From an (auto) biographical experience to a reflection on the investigation processes of ethnic-racial issues and public policies in education

Abstract

This work, resulting from the insertion group researching the Quilombola [Maroon] School Education at the Federal University of Pelotas / College of Education, " Teacher Training and Educational Policies for Quilombos [Maroon settlements]: Continuities and Prospects." By studying the different research methodologies, I came across references about (auto) biographical studies (ABRAHÃO, 2004) that made me become more intensely intertwined with the theme that I would investigate and which at first had appeared to be so distant from a student of the first academic semester of the Pedagogy program. When writing a narrative about myself, I forced myself to revisit a familiar path and observe the school histories of each of the parents, uncles/aunts, cousins, grandparents, the difficulties encountered, the possible choices and the paths traced by those few who came to the university. The quota policy, mechanism by which I entered the university, is the result of processes of struggle of black people to have access to formal education; the preliminary research about the educational levels of maroon communities in southern Rio Grande do Sul, locus in which this research is developed, also point out the difficulties encountered by several generations of Maroons to be in school where many of them were not able to complete the initial years of elementary school, requiring, therefore, educational policies specific to this ethnic grouping . In this sense, the survey data will be crisscrossing with an (auto) biographical exercise which ends by linking the scientific expertise to reflections that produce, in addition to socially valuable academic knowledge, a self knowledge and a strengthening of identity because being within the University is like entering a new world; it means dealing daily with controversial issues which cause confrontation and often are uncomfortable, because society has created a great need to divide the rich from the poor whites and blacks, yellows and indigenous, i.e. , a series of divisions that are repeated in multiple spaces.