INTERFACES BETWEEN LEARNING AND LIFE EXPECTATIONS AND SCHOOL EXPERIENCE OF IMPRISONED WOMEN: FACING UP TO THE REALITY OF SOCIAL REINTEGRATION

Abstract

In recent years, the education of people deprived of their freedom was placed on the political-educational agenda in Brazil as a subjective right. Great faith was placed in it as an indispensable tool for the so-called social reintegration of the imprisoned person, with its potential of contributing to diminishing the alarming rates of recidivism. In the text we reflect upon the problematic of reintegration based on life stories recounted by women prisoners from a prison in João Pessoa in the State of Paraiba (Brazil). Without denying the importance of the pedagogical proposal which the prison school offers, we consider it necessary to establish a dialogue between the life learning and school experience of each woman before she was imprisoned and the prison learning and their expectations and/or plans for freedom on concluding their sentences and seeking their re-entry into a society governed by deep-rooted social prejudices. We question if the school prepares the women for a real or for an illusory world. On the basis of the women’s testimonies, we can affirm the innumerate difficulties which the school prison faces in order to guarantee the necessary re-socializing ideal for the female inmates to face up to the real world inside and outside the prison bars. We also conclude that it is necessary to invest in projects and programs in the prison which establish a stronger link between education and work and which contribute to a stronger societal participation with regard to propositions and actions directed at the goal of social integration of this population. We consider this social apartheid as an educational question which needs to be further researched in the academy and politically faced up to.

Key words: Imprisoned women; life learning; education in prisons; social reintegration.