Traditional knowledge and the role of the school: Rethinking environmental education in Brazilian protected areas

Abstract

Environmental Conservation Units were created in Brazil as a political-environmental strategy and due to the increasing degradation of natural resources that occurred after the industrial revolution. During this period, many communities that inhabited these areas suffered the consequences of the importation of international models with a neoliberal character, which saw human beings as destroyers and therefore needed to be excluded from the local or deprived of the continuity of their ways of life. This situation generated social and economic consequences, intensifying poverty and creating a deep and complex process of exclusion of the subjects. Considering this reality, this study proposes initial discussions on the role of environmental education in these areas, taking as a reflection axis a school located on Ilha do Mel (Paraná-Brazil). It is emerging the use of environmental education strategies that enable the emancipation of the subjects, dialoguing with the baggage of knowledge that students bring and allowing, from them, school knowledge to be rethought and reorganized, since one of the major problems that rural people - as is the case of islanders - are the lack of recognition and appreciation of their culture, especially in the educational space, which leads to the lack of perception of the subjects as a collective.