Citizen School, The

The Citizen School (Escola Cidadã) is an educational framework developed in Brazil in the late 1980s. It was created in opposition to dominant neoliberal approaches to education and in response to the failures of the public system to provide quality schooling for all. Its aims are to democratize schooling, making education policy and curriculum more responsive to the needs of the community, and to empower students for effective political participation. The best-known instance of the initiative is in the city of Porto Alegre, although there are similar experiences in other regions of the country.

The distinctive approach of the Citizen School has its roots in the work of the Brazilian educationist Paulo Freire. He is influential through both his theoretical writings and his experience as secretary of education [Page 331]of the city of São Paulo from 1989 to 1991, when he brought about a number of policy changes aimed at ensuring greater community participation in the running of schools. Inspiration for the initiative also came from the Citizenship Schools established by Myles Horton in the United States. The term Citizen School was first used in Brazil in a 1989 journal article by Genuíno Bordignon. The notion was subsequently developed by a number of theorists associated with the Paulo Freire Institute in São Paulo, including Moacir Gadotti, José Eustáquio Romão, and Paulo Roberto Padilha. The institute has published a number of works on the subject, dealing with issues such as participa-tory planning, evaluation, and school councils.

The theoretical framework of the Citizen School involves a new form of school autonomy, in which funding is provided by the State and entry is free-of-charge to the students, but in which institutions determine their own expenditure and curriculum. Decision making is not the sole responsibility of the teaching or administrative staff, but extends, as far as is possible, to the whole of the school community, including parents and the students themselves. School, thereby, begins to serve the interests of the community rather than those of central government or the business community. The curriculum is constructed using as its base the historical and cultural specificity of the community, about which participatory research is continually conducted. The overarching orientations of the school are defined in what is called a politico-pedagogical plan. Evaluation too must be carried out by the school community and not be imposed by external evaluators.

Community participation in the running of the school is considered important not only in terms of more efficient use of resources but also as an educational experience for those involved, leading to democratic empowerment for marginalized populations. The process is also seen to educate the State, increasing its awareness of, and ability to respond to, the needs of the people. All of this is intended to create a new citizenship, based on radical democracy in the “non-State” public sphere.

The framework of the Citizen School is constructed in opposition to neoliberal ideas of the com-modification of knowledge and of decentralization of financial rather than administrative responsibility, to a large extent concretized in the policy recommendations of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The term citizen, liable to multiple and sometimes contradictory interpretations, in this case is used in opposition to the ideas of client and consumer. At the same time, the Citizen School opposes centralized bureaucratic socialism and aims to allow communities to determine their own political priorities.

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