EDUR • Educação em Revista. 2018; 34:e203244
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0102-4698203244
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
ARTICLE
CARE AND NEW MANAGERIALISM:
WHERE DOES THE FEMALE TEACHER’S WORK GO?1
MARÍLIA PINTO DE CARVALHO I *
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1029-4084
CINTHIA TORRES TOLEDO I **
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0238-7937
IVANA GONÇALVES DE OLIVEIRA I ***
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3526-691X
ÂNGELA ESTEVES MODESTO I ****
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8874-9785
CLÁUDIO DA SILVA NETO I *****
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1968-4054
ABSTRACT: This article presents part of the results of a study on the current
gender configurations in the work of teachers in the initial years of
fundamental education, which have been historically associated to femininity
and practices of care. New forms of management implemented by Brazilian
public administration since the end of the 1990s have put this model into
question, by requiring from male and female educators alike attitudes based
not only on a market logic, but also on values that are largely associated to a
kind of masculinity, such as individualism, competitiveness, focus on career
progress, and monetary reward. To investigate if those movements have
led to the effacement of historical marks of femininity associated to the
work of female teachers in the first years of education, we have conducted a
qualitative study in the public school system of the state of São Paulo, which
indicated the permanence of references to a femininity, albeit re-signified
and contradictorily integrated to the new managerialism policies.
Keywords: Teaching. Gender. Primary school. New managerialism. Care.
I
University of São Paulo, School of Education, São Paulo, SP, Brasil.
*
Senior Associate Professor at the School of Education of the University of São Paulo and co-coordinator
of Edges (Grupo de Estudos de Gênero, Educação e Cultura Sexual), in which all the authors take part.
E-mail:<mariliac@usp.br>.
**
PhD candidate in Education under a FAPESP scholarship. E-mail:<cinthiatt@gmail.com>.
***
MA candidate in Education. E-mail:<ivana.g.oliveira@gmail.com>.
****
PhD candidate in Education and teacher of the Psychology course at the Centro Universitário das
Faculdades Metropolitanas Unidas-FMU. E-mail:<angela.esteves.modesto@gmail.com>.
*****
PhD candidate in Education and School Principal at the São Paulo municipal school network.
E-mail:<claudioneto@usp.br.
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CUIDADO E GERENCIALISMO: PARA ONDE VAI O TRABALHO DAS PROFESSORAS
RESUMO: O artigo apresenta parte dos resultados de uma pesquisa sobre as
atuais configurações de gênero no trabalho docente nos anos iniciais do ensino
fundamental, que foi historicamente associado a uma feminilidade e a práticas
de cuidado. Contudo, as novas formas de gestão difundidas na administração
pública brasileira desde o final da década de 1990, têm colocado em questão
esse modelo, ao exigirem dos educadores e educadoras posturas baseadas não
apenas na lógica de mercado, mas também em valores que se considera como
relativos a um tipo de masculinidade, como individualismo, competitividade,
foco na ascensão na carreira e em recompensas monetárias. Para investigar
se esses movimentos levaram ao apagamento dos traços históricos de
feminilidade associados ao trabalho das professoras dos anos iniciais, foi
feito um estudo qualitativo na rede pública estadual de SP, que indicou a
permanência de referências a uma feminilidade, porém ressignificadas e
contraditoriamente integradas às novas políticas gerencialistas.
Palavras chave: Trabalho docente. Gênero. Anos iniciais do ensino fundamental.
Gerencialismo. Cuidado.
INTRODUCTION
This article presents part of the results of a study on the
current gender configurations in the teaching profession at the first
years of fundamental education. Gender is taken as a category of
analysis and has an important role in the construction of symbolic
systems (SCOTT, 1995). The theoretical effort here is to go beyond
the idea of individual gender identities and to consider two dimension
of analysis: gender as a fundamental category through which meaning
is attributed to everything; and gender as a way of organizing social
relations (HARAWAY, 2004).
Teachers’ work at the first years of fundamental education
has been historically associated to care and to femininity, that is,
to characteristics socially associated to women, such as dedication,
valuation of non-monetary rewards, and emotional attachment. In
this context, we define care as practices of integral and individualized
attention to pupils (CARVALHO, 1999).
During the last decades, however, this working model has been
questioned by new forms of management based on the notions of
quality, efficiency, assessment and accountability. The “new public
management”, also called “new managerialism”, arrives at schools as the
single solution capable of leading to quality education (HYPOLITO,
VIEIRA, LEITE, 2012) and educational policy is subjected to economy,
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not only with regards to financing, but through the very understanding
of how the state should function (SOUZA, 2016; DALE, 1989). It is a
management focused on measurable results, which implies identifying
quality of education with good results of students in standardized,
large-scale assessments, in other words, the quality of education is now
defined on the basis of criteria of efficiency and productivity, within a
clear corporate framework (FREITAS, 2014).
From the viewpoint of control and organization of work,
new managerialism is associated to management models that have
taken root with contemporary capitalism under the production
restructuring of the last decades of the 20th century, characterized
by flexibilization, the rise in job insecurity, working intensification,
the emphasis on results, the expansion of individualism and
competitiveness among workers, as well as the use of techniques of
involvement and participation of workers in the company’s plans
(ANTUNES, 2008; ALVES, 2011). Apart from that, it is also a
characteristic of this period of contemporary capitalism the expansion
of commercial relations into spheres of life that hitherto had been
untouched by these processes, such as care and close relationships,
which now become part of the market, or at least obey its logic and
values (MORINI, 2008; EVANGELISTA; VALETIN, 2013). The
introduction of mercantile logic in the classrooms of public schools
can be understood as part of this expansion.
New managerialism requires from educators attitudes focused
on efficiency and accountability to “consumers”, reinforcing a
subjectivity that involves individualized, competitive, planned actions
aimed at career progress and monetary reward. These principles
are grounded not only in the logic of the market, but also in values
that are seen as related to masculinity – or to a form of masculinity
(MAHONY, HEXTALL, MENTER, 2004; CHAN, 2011; GARCIA,
ANADON, 2009). To some authors, this markedly masculine
orientation tends to marginalize femininity, which until now has set
the tone for the teaching of children (BLACKMORE, SACHS, 2007;
CHAN, 2011), bringing with it new challenges both for men and for
women in the construction of their teaching practice.
In an analytically reverse sense, studies on the expansion of
aspects traditionally associated to the work of women to the larger
group of workers discuss the feminization2 of work in our era
(MORINI, 2008; ABÍLIO, 2014), signifying the expansion both of
characteristics typical of domestic labor and of those associated to
predominantly feminine paid occupations. The growing presence
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of unpaid work, with the erasing of differences between worktime
and free time, and also between workplace and home, which create
a situation of full availability of the worker, mixes work and leisure
and generates certain invisibility of the work, which are all features
of domestic labor, historically carried out by women, but which
today are central to labor in general. Besides, job insecurity, versatility,
informality, low payment levels and high turnover rates, characteristics
of majorly feminine paid occupations, are now constitutive elements
of everybody’s labor. Thus, this feminization process has the meaning
of establishing a “new old relation”, in the words of Ludmila Abílio
(2014, p. 86), to the extent that the more precarious and degraded forms
of work are now updated and constitute links in the internationalized
production chain of global economy.
In the case of teachers from the first years of fundamental
education, in a country in which precariousness and informality
are constitutive of the labor market for men and women, part of
the old characteristics marks the very origin of the occupation
of teaching in public schools, during the first decades of the 20th
century: versatility, presence of unpaid, invisible work, lack of
distinction between worktime and free time. Another part is present
in its exercise since the 1970s: precariousness, low payment, high
staff turnover. It remains to be investigated the form in which these
characteristics are transformed and updated with the introduction of
the mercantile logic in public schools, with the consequent expansion
and automation of control mechanisms, self-intensification, and the
pressure for results. Will these movements have led to the erasure of
the traces of femininity that used to mark the dedicated teacher that
cares for her students and loves to teach?
With that purpose a qualitative study was conducted, which is
more conducive to capturing meanings and processes (SARMENTO,
2011), with the use of observations and semistructured interviews
(ZAGO, 2011). The São Paulo state school system was chosen for its
national representativeness and for the presence of a management
policy for teachers’ work based on the standardized assessment of
learning, with the establishment of goals and the payment of annual
bonuses. Seeking the highest possible diversity regarding sex, age, and
experience, nine female teachers, two male teachers, and a pedagogical
coordinator were interviewed, all working at the initial years of
fundamental education in nine schools located in different areas of the
city of São Paulo or in municipalities of its metropolitan area. Eight of
those teachers had their classes observed during one of two sessions.3
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The current basic education school system of São Paulo
comprises 5300 schools in which 4,300,000 students are enrolled,
and 148,738 teachers work. From these, 29,662 (19.94%) are
responsible for classes in the first years of fundamental education,
according to the School Census (INEP, 2018). Governed since 1995
by the same political party (PSDB), the state of São Paulo has seen
certain continuity in educational policies, based on proposals to
reduce costs and improve efficiency through the use of computers,
and on an administrative reform grounded in the principles of
new managerialism. These policies can be understood through two
complementary lines of action: on the one hand, the implementation
of a procedure of assessment of students’ performance through
standardized tests (SARESP) and the creation in 2007 of a state-wide
index (IDESP) which, apart from the results in the test, also considers
the flow of students; on the other hand, the rewarding of educators
based either on the results of those tests and in the fulfilment of
goals (result-based bonuses) or based on the assessment of teachers
for their career progress (merit examination) (CASSETARI, 2010;
ZATTI, 2017). Apart from the exams of the Basic Education
Assessment System (SAEB) organized by the Ministry for Education
(MEC) and of the São Paulo State School Performance Assessment
System (SARESP), students from the São Paulo state school system
located in the capital became in 2017 part of a program based on the
Results Improvement Method (MMR) with bimonthly assessments
named Assessment of Learning in Process (AAP).
In the initial years of fundamental education, state-wide
tests are based on the “Read and Write” and EMAI (“Mathematical
Teaching in the Initial Years”) programs, which comprise Portuguese
and Mathematics curricula, respectively; courses and other continued
education activities for teachers and managers; detailed guiding
materials for the classroom and materials for the pupils. Programs are
permanently followed up by staff from the Secretariat, and teachers’
books contain detailed indications of how each activity is to be
developed (LIMA, 2014; RIGOLON, 2013).
A FEMININE WORK MODEL
Several analysts and even supporters of these management
policies within the São Paulo state school system recognize that they
have been implemented in a top-down model, that is, as an imposition
from the higher administration (JUNQUEIRA, n.d.; CASSETARI,
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2010; ZATTI, 2017). In the initial years of fundamental education,
they were imposed to teachers who historically shared a work model
based on characteristics seen as feminine.
Female teachers have been the majority at this level of teaching
since the beginning of the 20th century, when the Brazilian public
school system was constituted and historically unfolded into the
current years of fundamental education. In São Paulo, female teachers
already represented “70% of the total number of staff in charge
of teaching” in 1921, according to Lourenço Filho (REIS, 1991, p.
72). Luís Pereira, based on data from MEC and IBGE, indicates that
women were 93.3% of the “primary teaching in the São Paulo state
school system” in 1961 (PEREIRA, 1969, p. 31). And in 2017 they
represented 91.8%, according to the School Census (INEP, 2018).
But it is not just about a numerical presence. Femininity
characteristics have been persistently associated to the work of
teaching children. For example, 92.5% of primary school teachers
that responded Luís Pereira’s questionnaire in 19594 stated that the
profession was more adequate to women and justified it saying that:
“it is easier for the woman to turn the school into a second home.
There are countless students that miss this in a male teacher’s class”;
“in my opinion, the woman is by nature and instinct more linked to
the child” (PEREIRA, 1969, p. 49).
In 1996, studying teachers from the initial years of fundamental
education in the São Paulo state school system, one of us found out an
ideal of teacher based on the practices of care, understood as integral
and individualized attention to every aspect of the development of
children, and not just to its cognitive dimension. In the words of a
young teacher, then 21 years old: “I think that the teacher, he does not
have to pass only contents, because sometimes you are talking to a pupil,
you talk with the father or mother, and you find a way” (CARVALHO,
1999). This component of the work of teachers, which resulted in an
emotional attachment to children, and in extra-classroom work, but also
in pleasure and accomplishment, did not have a name, nor was it made
explicit or openly discussed. The only possible references to encompass
the care, the available vocabulary, were femininity and maternity, with
which their pedagogical practices where intensely correlated. In fact,
school teaching for children and maternity were referred to one and the
same cultural matrix, itself also historically constructed.
Ten years later, Alda Judith Alves-Mazzotti (2007) studied
teachers from public schools of fundamental education in Rio de
Janeiro and identified the term “dedication” as the core of the
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representation about being a teacher among those associated to
the first years of education. Although the author does not draw
this relation, we can say that the term is articulated with an idea
of femininity, just like other associations made by those teachers,
including vocation, mission and abnegation.
The interviews conducted in 2017 bring indications that
this tradition of relating the teaching profession at the initial years
of fundamental education to characteristics socially attributed to
femininity did not remain unchanged in our days, but is still very
much present, and is being re-signified in the context of the new
forms of management of the teaching work.
THE CARING TEACHER: “MOTHER HEN AND HER CHICKS”
The interview given by a teacher named Ester constituted a
landmark in the construction of this reflection. White,5 46 years old,
Ester had 28 years of experience, always at the same school. She
graduated from her Teaching course in 1989, and at the age of 18 she
was already teaching; in 2000 she took a distance course in Pedagogy
under an agreement established between the São Paulo State
Secretariat for Education and the University of São Paulo. Married
to a businessman, with a single daughter aged 20, Ester declared that
her income as a teacher served mainly to pay for the daughter’s higher
education plus “some part of the credit card bill”.
In reality, after I got married I never had to maintain the household, with all
expenses and everything. We know that if you have to keep a household with the
salary that we have now it is impossible, isn’t it? So, it would have to be something
like a supplement. (Ester)
She declared having chosen to be a teacher because at that
time it was “every girls’ dream”, and she described her relationship
with the students as that of a “mother hen, really. I always tell them
that they are like the chicks, and I put them under my wing (laughs).”
Ester had already been invited to take on the post of pedagogical
coordinator and a position in the teaching directorship, but she
refused “because teaching classes you see the pupil progressing,
you see the accomplishment at the end of the year; and that I will
not trade for anything, I do not give it up.” It is a narrative quite
similar to those collected from teachers in studies conducted decades
ago (PEREIRA, 1969; BRUSCHINI; AMADO, 1988), which also
mentioned the vocation to be a teacher, the dedication to children
and the sense of accomplishment of seeing their progress.
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Ester’s testimonies made clear the marks of femininity and
the reference to maternity in order to describe her practice:
[The good teacher] firstly he has to love, firstly he has to love the pupils. […] Since
my first years I always worked very much with my heart in what I do. After I had
my daughter, it became even more present, because I saw the pupils as if they
were my children, and I always thought: I want to give all I can to them, because it
was as if it was my daughter that was sitting there at those benches. (Ester)
In some respects, her words recall the testimonies collected
by Pereira (1969), in which one reads that women “had more of a
knack” for children from the then called primary school, because
“for a male teacher it becomes more difficult, this tender acceptance
of the little ones” (p. 59). However, ideas linked to professionalism
are present and articulated to the maternal sphere, since Ester put the
dedication to pupils as the source of the professional attitudes she
valued, such as preparing classes and having well-defined objectives.
She did not oppose maternity and professionalism, and recognized
the importance of a pedagogical formation:
You have to know: why did you choose this profession? We know it’s not for the
money; so, you chose it because you have a perspective, because you want to make a
difference. You chose it as an odd job, for necessity, or because you had an ideal to be
fulfilled, to be accomplished? The second step is you knowing where you want to go
with your students. You prepare your classes to reach the objectives you set; because
no one gets anywhere if they don’t know where they want to go, isn’t it? (Ester).
The teacher also declared that she always took work home, “at
least an hour and a half per day to prepare classes”, and that she spent her
own money to offer activities to the students: “Sometimes I photocopy
homework, I print things at home from my own pocket.” (Ester).
With no need for financial bonuses – not even the salary was
essential –, working for idealism and love, with what she loved, Ester
had everything to stay away from the standardized tests and attainment
of goals, if the motive was strictly financial. However, she demonstrated
to be one of the best-informed interviewees about the bonus policy
and its calculations, the goals for her school and for the state etc.
For 2016 the result is already out, our school had to reach 7.7. […] [The state]
wants to reach a target of 6 by 2030 [statewide average] and we were already at
7.6. But we had two 5th year classes, and not just one; so, we had a few problems.
Even so, we reached 6.1! 6.1 is still above many schools, but we did not reach the
target. So, there are schools, for example, that reached a target of 3.5 and receive
the bonus, whereas we are at 6.1 and will receive nothing. (Ester)
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The teacher also mentioned being favorable to external
assessment and to the changes brought about by the system of goals:
Because you have to reach the goal and then, whether you want it or not, there’s
more expectation, isn’t it and then, whether you want it or not, a person, even the
most settled one, will have to be bothered to do something. So, I see it positively,
you know, I see this assessment positively. (Ester)
When talking about her work, she threw light on the issue of
the presence of result-based management in her classroom practice.
Because the classes which Ester taught in general went well in the
tests, the principal pressured her to take on fifth year classes, since
they were the ones who took the SARESP (São Paulo State School
Performance Assessment System). She did not like it: “it’s too much
pressure”, she said. That year she was happy to have gone back to
teaching fourth year classes, not so much because she was then able
to direct her work towards objectives other than the test, but because
she could then have “two years to prepare them for the SARESP”.
At the same time, Ester was happy with the degree of
autonomy she had, and she liked the curriculum and materials given
by the Secretary for education (Ler e Escrever [Reading and Writing]
and EMAI – Ensino de Matemática nos Anos Iniciais [Mathematics
Teaching for the Initial Years]).
We have the curriculum we have to follow, which is a parameter for the whole
State, but that, I think, is even good, viable, because […] When we receive a
student from our State, that comes with this curriculum, what he or she is learning
at school, will be given continuity here. Now, the way I’ll develop this curriculum,
the way I’ll present it to my pupil… The way you’re going to work with your
pupils, that is a choice of the teacher. (Ester)
This idea of autonomy is very distant, for example, from that
observed in the late 1990s among teachers of the first years, who were
quite free to define objectives, contents, methodology, the pace of
work, and the forms of evaluation of learning. For those teachers, the
model of a vocationed, affective teacher corresponded to a high degree
of autonomy and control over her own work. (CARVALHO, 1999)
Ester, therefore, personifies an ideal worker from the viewpoint
of the new public management: simultaneously sympathetic to the tests
and targets, and satisfied with the situation of carrying out a teaching
defined externally, she maintains definite features of the old primary
teacher, socially identified to femininity, which make her a dedicated
teacher, who works at home without payment, spends her own
resources to supplement what the State does not supply, and justifies
her attitudes as consequences of her concern with the children.
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OTHER OUTLOOKS: “I’M NOT THE STUDENT’S MOTHER, I’M NOT THE STUDENT’S
AUNT, I AM NOT THE STUDENT’S GODMOTHER”
But, would that profile be an exception? Ester’s testimony
contained two extremes: on the one hand, she resorted explicitly to
references to maternity to describe her work; on the other hand, she
declared being favorable to the standardized curriculum, to large-scale
assessments and to the targets. Unlike her, some of the interviewees were,
to varying degrees, critical of standardization and of the corresponding
forms of control, although they all worked under those parameters.
Also, the explicitly maternal discourse was not the rule among
the interviewees, and was present only in the arguments of Zuleica,
brown, 46 years old just like Ester but, unlike her, coming from a lowincome family and, at the time of interview, the sole responsible for
the sustenance of her family.
Our colleagues of the sixth year will not have the same amount of time as the PEB
I [initial years of fundamental education] teacher, we sometimes find ourselves
being like big mothers […] I think the challenge is more in the affective life of the
child, which interferes in the cognitive, whether you want it or not. But that’s our
role, that’s the challenge, to seek ways of helping them. […] a big mother, she has
to be strict at the right time, but most of her life she has to have a more tender
look, even to the child’s tantrums. The teacher is no different, because you see the
student coming to your desk, he calls you father, mother, grandma. […] If he sees
you with this image, it is because he seeks in you something more then you just
teaching him to read and write. So, we have to have this mother’s outlook. (Zuleica)
As in Ester’s case, this attitude did not prevent Zuleica from
adopting the goal-based work and standardized tests, which she
thought were of great help.
Previously, we had to take clippings from the SARESP to work with abilities, to
see students’ competences and prepare them for the SARESP. Now, this AAP,
which is the Process Learning Assessment, came to help us, because it already
makes an assessment, works with everything that will be required later at the
SARESP […] It’s very good to guide the work of the teacher, to see all the
progress. We would find out only at the SARESP, at the end of it, the following
year, when the feedback came. […] So, I think it is very good. (Zuleica)
At the other extreme of the testimonies, we have arguments
against the maternal model, explicit in the case of Cynthia, 38-yearold, white, divorced, no children (“by choice”):
The person who has to embrace is the mother, the person who has to take care is
the mother, you are a teacher, you teach the letters, you teach them knowledge. You
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offer, you take information and transform it into knowledge to prepare them for life
and for the labor market. Tenderness, affection, you have towards them because it’s
a human being, but it is the family that is supposed to give them that, the teacher is
no substitute. […] Because I lead my life like this, my private life from the door out.
I am a teacher from the door in, between 7:00 and 11:30 I am a teacher, that is my
profession, I studied for that. I worked at a school that belonged to a Frenchman,
and once he was very direct with me, he said: “what have you studied for?”, “to be a
teacher”, “then be a teacher, that is what you are”. So, I am not the student’s mother,
I’m not the student’s aunt, I’m not the student’s godmother. (Cynthia)
The testimony of Renata, 26-year-old, black, married, at the
time expecting her first child, goes along the same lines. Although
she didn’t criticize explicitly the maternity-based model, she valued
the kind of attitude displayed by her school’s principal when allowing
the teachers to concentrate on the transfer of content, differently
from the teacher that understands caring as part of her work, paying
attention to all aspects of her students’ development:
The teacher there [at school] is seen really as authority, you are a teacher. When
there is a problem with discipline, you don’t even know what it’s happening, you
just refer it to the principal, they sort it out. Parents never come to the teacher, the
school never allow it, you are only taken from the classroom if it’s really necessary.
[…], the teacher is the pedagogical, you are there to work, to take care of the
pedagogical learning; indiscipline, this kind of things, this is all management, the
principal office takes care of it. (Renata, emphasis in her speech)
Between one extreme and the other, the other interviewees can
be located in a continuum whose testimonies, although not referring
to maternity, included in various degrees the elements of the carebased model of teaching, that is to say, of the individualized attention
to the integral development of the child. Celina, for example, the
youngest teacher we interviewed (23 years old), expressed herself in
the following terms:
I try to give them the attention, the caring they need, because sometimes they
miss it very much. […] there are some of them that we see that they lack
attention, caring. And sometimes this is the only attention they get, here with
us. […] When we are doing some activity that is more difficult for them, I take a
chair and sit beside them, I explain, I talk. Then, sometimes you go into private
issues of the pupil, also, because they end up telling you, opening themselves.
(Celina, our emphasis)
The sentence highlighted above brings almost the same words
as those of the teacher cited by Pereira (1969), mentioning that pupils
lack caring and attention. Marlucy (28 years old), in her turn, spoke
about affection in reversal, blaming herself for not being able to
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offer the children what she thought was adequate. Even not knowing
Celina, Marlucy used very similar arguments, revealing how much
they are part of a prevailing school culture:
It’s not so much that I do not relate well to these children, but I have difficulties
giving affection; then, I stay more, like, in the learning part; the affection itself
I kind of block out, you know? […] And I think you have to have something
that I don’t really have, which is impartiality, managing to be affective with any
pupil independently of their behavior. Because, in fact, these things you see on
the Internet: that sometimes your pupil, the only place he has to be heard, to
have attention is the school. It is true. If you are there you know it: there are
children who give the impression that they don’t really have that kind of thing
at home. And not being able to give it to some pupils, it bothers me. I think the
ideal teacher would have to have this kind of emotional intelligence to be able to
supply this part of the affection too. (Marlucy, our emphasis)
Explicit reference to maternal elements were therefore not
present in the majority of testimonies, but there were references
culturally associated to femininity that were approached in a manner
consistent with the major changes in the patterns of gender relations
that took place in Brazilian society since the study by Pereira (1969).
Besides, comparing the current interviews with older testimonies,
current elements linked to specific pedagogical knowledge are
evident, which we can relate to a discourse of professionalization
of teaching, current in the Brazilian educational field since at least
the 1980s (SCHERER; DAL`IGNA, 2017). However, even if the
teachers we interviewed did not speak much of maternal instincts
and natural gifts, even if many did not make explicit appeal to being
“a second mother”, they alluded to the need to give affection and
attention, to “emotional intelligence”, to the development of pupils
beyond cognitive aspects. And even Renata and Cynthia, who
declared to be against the association between teacher and mother,
revealed in their observed practices, apart from systematic exchanges
of affection with pupils, whom they knew closely, also attention to
extra-cognitive aspects of their development. Renata commented
about her own expenses with pedagogical material, and even with
small gifts to children, revealing the many layers of her understanding
of what it means to be a teacher “focused on the pedagogical”:
There are always things that you get out of your pocket to do in the classroom.
Apart from the small treats that you end up wanting to give them. If you want
to do it, you have to give it. Like, during Easter, you want to give them a little
something, then you buy it out of your pocket; Children’s Day, you have to give
them something, so you end up buying out of your pocket. (Renata)
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Thus, beyond the explicit reference to maternal elements,
other elements of the model of the dedicated teacher were constantly
present in speeches and practices. The gratifying dimension of the
work was found in all interviewees – both male and female. And
it always led to valuing non-monetary forms of compensation. All
teachers declared loving to give classes, that it was a work in which
they saw results, in which they could make a difference and look
towards the future, a captivating work, in which they were happy.6
Let us now see other aspects of the so-called feminization of
the labor.
MIXTURES: “THERE ARE ALWAYS THINGS THAT YOU GET OUT OF YOUR POCKET”
The fact that the teacher takes work home is almost taken
for granted, recognized by the common sense and incorporated to
the definition of work shift, based on the labor demands of the
category. For the State of São Paulo, the current weekly work shift of
30 hours includes 10 classes 50 minutes long each (about 8 hours) of
pedagogical work to be carried out in any location, apart from three
hours-class to be carried out at the school.
All our interviewees declared working at home, although the
period declared varied between three and eight hours a week. Apart
from preparing classes and grading exercises and exams, activities
such as looking for materials, news and information, searching
contents and attending courses were conducted during their free
time, on weekends and vacations.
In addition to that, the obligations introduced by the new form
of school management have increased this period of work at home,
and have diversified the tasks, either because of the bureaucratic
demands, with a large number of plans, spreadsheets and reports
to fill and deliver, or by the obligation to attend courses, such as
the one that is required of any teacher who has been approved in
public admission exams. The EMAI program also presupposes the
participation, seen as voluntary, of teachers in weekly formation
meetings at school, which are called collaborative groups and are not
included in the pedagogical time paid by the state.
The material requires a lot of study. The EMAI works with a collaborative group
where we, the teachers that want to take part of this collaborative group, we arrive
earlier for work at school, we sit down together and study. […] The teacher’s book
doesn’t have answers, it has loads of instructions, if you take the pupil’s book and
just apply it, it doesn’t work. So, you have to study. (Cecilia)
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In practical terms, work time and leisure time for teachers
have been historically superposed and mixed, and the new forms of
management have taken advantage of this feminine tradition of the
category to advance towards the total flexibilization of labor. The case
of teacher Zuleica is emblematic, not just with respect to availability of
time, but also to versatility and precariousness. She described herself
as a “multiuse” teacher, referring to her triple school work shift, since
she arrived daily at the school where the interview was conducted at
7 AM and stayed until 11:45 “at the ready”, that is, ready to substitute
for any teacher that missed a day’s work. At 12:30 she entered the
classroom at a different school, where she was responsible for a class
and, in the evening, she went back to the first school to substitute for
teachers of the second stage of fundamental education.
I come on the off-chance, because it’s easier, isn’t it? I can’t always phone
beforehand to know, so I prefer to come. I bring some activities with me, and
if someone misses the day’s work I’m ready, because I like to prepare the class
too, any year I teach, I think we are here to work and to give our best. […] But,
for example, if an English teacher is missing, of course I’ll not teach English,
because I don’t have command of the class subject, but I try to teach something
near and that you can… because, without false modesty, I’ve always been
complimented for my classes. (Zuleica)
If no colleague was absent, it was “a day dismissed”: Zuleica
remained at the school’s disposal but received no payment. This is
precariousness, versatility and total availability that were not created
by the new management of the school system, but that are completely
functional in it and thrive alongside the proclaimed modernity and
the technical apparatus mobilized by it.
Apart from the use of time, working at home meant using
their own equipment, and therefore material expenses for the
teachers, expenses that go unaccounted, but which are indispensable
for the functioning of official programs such as the Ler e Escrever
[Read and Write] and the EMAI. These contributions are in practice
presupposed in the management plans which, also in this case, make
use of a preexisting tradition.
I’ve already brought EVA sheets, cardboard, card paper, ink. Sometimes the school
has it, but when they don’t have it, I end up bringing it out of my pocket. (Celina)
The EMAI says: You have to give them homework. I give my pupils homework.
Who does it? I do. Who prints it? I do it, I buy the paper, I buy the ink. (Cecilia)
Teachers, using their free time and their personal relations,
found ways of acquiring the materials the school failed to supply:
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We have a newspaper project in the [Ler e Escrever program] book. But the
government doesn’t send newspapers to the students, we have to go after
newspapers. And newspaper is expensive, we know. And you have to have
complete newspapers. […] Look, I go around collecting them, I tell my mother:
“Mom, if you have newspaper, save it for me”. My sister works at an estate agent,
and her boss reads a lot of newspaper, then she brings me quite a bit; then I keep
them, I collect them, and then I do the project with the pupils. (Renata)
I had a first year class in 2015, and we had [in the EMAI notebook] games with
bottle caps, so I collected bottle caps for the whole weekend. I don’t have just a bag,
I have a huge box full of bottle caps. We always think: Oh, I’ll manage. (Manoela)
Even informatization, one of the mainstays of the efficiency
intended by the Secretariat for Education, relies on the work
developed at home and on the teachers’ own resources, despite the
digital systems and processes being presented as state-of-the-art:
This weekend I have to put grades into the system, what they call STED, Digital
School System, I have to input the grades myself. […] And at school it’s very difficult
to do this, there are not enough computers, and too many teachers. (Marlucy)
NEW OLD WORKING CONDITIONS: “DOUBLE SHIFTS”, “MERGE CLASSES”
As to the working conditions, the complaints are widespread
among the interviewees regarding the lack of resources, such as
computers, computer rooms, overhead projectors, video rooms,
library, didactic materials and games, apart from the large number of
pupils in each class and the difficulties in effectively including pupils
with special needs. If this precariousness of working conditions is
no news, it is worth emphasizing how much the arguments in favor
of accepting them for the good of the children are still present, as
teacher Zuleica tells us:
Last year, for example, the teacher that was going to take that class had many
health problems and was nearly retiring, and students stayed without classes for
a long time; then I took two classes, which meant almost 50 students, or even
more, isn’t it? There are photographs there. The colleagues […] wanted to kill
me, because they walked by and saw the class full: “You can’t do that, because it’s
them who must send someone”. But they forget that child that was there, many
of them coming by bus, and the parents had no way of keeping them at home,
they were already counting on it, the brother was in the 6th year, or in the 7th, or
the 8th, and he had to stay here, poor thing, until 11:00, 11:30, which was his time
to leave. And I was in my classroom, with my pupils. Then I looked and said: No,
if I’m taking one, why not take all of them? (Zuleica)
Pressured to guarantee the targets with full classes, in illequipped schools, without materials or assistants, teachers found
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their own ways, and dug into their own resources and free time,
overstretching themselves to cater for the pupils’ needs, reproducing
and actualizing the model of the dedicated and altruistic teacher
within the context of a management that spoke of efficiency, results
and professionalism, and which makes teachers accountable for the
performance of the pupils without consideration for their working
conditions. On their part, teachers re-signified the flexible labor and
precarization under a grammar based on dedication and care.
Another characteristic of the flexible labor present for
decades in the teaching category is the precarious working situations.
There are indications that working for years without having tenure
was already part of the career of primary teachers in the São Paulo
state school system since the 1930s (MOURA, 2013). Data offered by
Pereira (1969) pointed that 13.4% of teachers responsible for classes
in activity within this segment of education were not tenured in 1960,
a proportion that grew significantly in the state of São Paulo (and
likewise in the whole of the country) during the military dictatorship,
when the policy of expansion of enrolments in basic education was
put in place at the expenses of income contraction and flexibilization
in the forms of hiring teachers, generating a much larger contingent
of teachers hired without public exams (PIOVEZAN; DAL RI, 2016;
MOURA, 2013). Already in 2017, 25.5% of the state teachers at the
initial years of fundamental education were being hired temporarily,
according to the 2017 School Census (INEP, 2018).
Among the teachers we interviewed, Zuleica and Claudia had
worked in the state school system for 28 and 27 years, respectively,
without ever having tenure, and having gone through a variety of
forms of temporary contracts before acquiring stability.7 The vast
majority of the interviewees that took on posts through public exam
worked previously under precarious contracts, during periods that
varied between three and 10 years; only Manuela and Cecilia started
already as stable teachers, after approval in public exams.
Another old dimension of precariousness is that the low
salaries push teachers to look for a second source of income. Among
the primary teachers of the São Paulo state school system researched
by Luís Pereira, 26% had another paid occupation, the vast majority of
them as private teachers (PEREIRA, 1969). Nowadays, one of the most
common forms of increasing income is to “double” or “accumulate”,
that is, to work for different school systems, in different shifts, moving
daily from one to the other. The double association with public service
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has been allowed for teachers at the national level since 1998 but was
already regulated in São Paulo since the previous year and produces
working shifts of up to 60 weekly hours. (PIOVEZAN; DAL RI, 2016)
Among the 12 interviewees, only three did not have another
paid employment. Cecilia taught at a private college in the evenings;
Isac and Zuleica (whose situation was detailed above), apart from
their classes, worked also as occasional teachers in the same state
school system, substituting for colleagues in different schools, an
unstable source of income, since payment is on a class given basis.
And finally, Renata, Manuela, Valter, Marlucy, Claudia and Celina had
other posts in the schools of the municipal school system of the
capital, or of some municipality of the Metropolitan region. This
meant that these teachers were responsible during the year for 60
pupils or more, depending on the size of the classes.
Despite this overload, many teachers declared avoiding to the
maximum being absent from work, as Ester explained:
If I miss a class, what will those 26 little pupils be doing in the square? It is a lot
of responsibility for the school. Then, we try not to miss classes, only if it’s really
programmed; or if you are ill, you take a license, and then there is already an
occasional teacher to substitute for you. (Ester)
With such extended working shifts,8 the time teachers dedicate
to studying, to their formation and to collective work is reduced,
increasing their reliance on standardized booklets and on the action
of coordinators, making more and more welcome solutions defined
externally, those things that “they give you ready, you only have to
apply it in the classroom”, in the words of Renata.
It is still worth highlighting the historically low participation
of teachers of the first years of fundamental education in union
movements and in strikes of the category, in general using as an
argument their concern with the children.
Usually I do not go on strike, because I always think about my pupils, the little
ones […]; I do not go on strike thinking about the pupils, because if you look at
everything that is wrong, you would have to go, wouldn’t you? (Ester)
This tradition of working under precarious conditions, with
temporary contracts, of not missing classes and not taking part in
union activities seems rather useful for the school Administration, a
tradition that in the case of teachers from the initial years is associated
to a model of femininity.
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THE CHOICE OF PROFESSION: “I JUST LOVE THIS”
With only a single exception, the narratives about the choice
of profession follow two basic lines: the vocationed choice, which
we might call classical, in which the interviewee declared that she
dreamt of being a teacher since she was a child; and the discovery
of the “passion for teaching” during the Pedagogy course or at the
beginning of the career, after a choice motivated by convenience.
In the first case, we find six teachers with rather diversified
ages and socio-economic origins.
Amanda, 51-year-old pedagogical coordinator, described thus
her choice:
Oh, since I was a little girl, playing with dolls, I was already reprimanding them
and teaching them. My aunt worked in that area, she worked with Inclusive
Special Education. She got me quite involved in this subject; I think it was more
because of her, really. (Amanda)
That narrative is similar to that of 26-year-old Renata:
I have always enjoyed teaching, you know, when I was little. So, I’m not sure if
it was because of my mother [teacher], but I thought it was very beautiful. […] I
think it’s like my mother used to say, it’s vocation. (Renata)
On the other hand, the stories told by Valter, Isac, Claudia,
Marlucy and Cecilia spoke of choices motivated by circumstantial
needs and of a later discovery of the love to the profession. Valter
(white, 50 years old) worked in a bank and taught history classes in state
schools under temporary contracts still as a student in the Economics
course. When trying a different course, he did not have “the luxury
of choosing a highly competitive career”, so he chose Pedagogy and
declared he ended up “getting it unconsciously right”. Isac (brown, 35
years old) also had other occupations before giving classes:
At the age of 18 I was a cook, I couldn’t get into the Mathematics course, which
I wanted […] Then I went into the labor market… an American supermarket
chain. I had to work […] In those years I was taking the ENEM exam, I had
five options to choose from, and I always chose four Mathematics and one in
the area of Education. In 2008 I took the exam and got a good grade. I wanted
Mathematics, my last choice was Pedagogy. And I got a full scholarship for
Pedagogy. I didn’t manage to do Mathematics. […] But when I did Pedagogy I
had like a transformation. Because the First Cycle is very hard, but if you enjoy
working it becomes a pleasure; and I fell in love for the First Cycle. […] Because
it is a kind of work that, if you like it, it’s fascinating. (Isac)
Different circumstances led Claudia (white, 51 years old) to
take a teaching course:
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I didn’t want to be a teacher, I wanted to be an air stewardess. But we were eight
children, and my mother couldn’t afford me an English course or something like
that. And also, Teaching was the only course I could take during the day, there
was nothing else. And my father wouldn’t allow me to take evening courses […]
And I wanted to go to college, my dream was going to college. So, I thought: I’m
gonna take the Teaching course because it is a way of going beyond Secondary
Education, of going to college. […] Then I started as an occasional teacher, while
I still studied; and when I graduated, I didn’t look for anything, I didn’t apply for
anything, no Education Board, not even at the school; but, because the principal
already knew me and because there was a spare first-year class, she came to my
place: “Oh, Claudia, there is a class so and so”. I said: “I’ll take it”. And then, in
the same year I got married. My husband said: “you either take on classes or you
stay at home, you’re not going to work for a company”. There was also that. I
said: “Oh my, I can’t believe it”. But it was done… I applied at the time for the
Bradesco Foundation, and I had passed and everything, but at the time they didn’t
take married women. […] Then I was quite sad, because I wanted to go there;
because I said: “Well, if I’m not going to be an air stewardess, I’m going to work
for a bank, I’m not going to be a teacher under any circumstances”. But, then, it
happened. I got married, I was giving classes, I continued giving classes. […] But
then I started to work, and I got to like it. And now I can tell you, thanks… I
thank the Lord, I love this, I just love this. (Claudia)
The exception to these two stories was presented by Cynthia,9
the only teacher to describe a choice influenced by the school she
attended and by the pedagogical method employed therein:
I attended, I learned to read and write at a Montessori school, which is a school
very different from the standard, it differs from this 18th and 19th century thing
that still structures it, the Brazilian school structure is still like that. So, when
you go into a Montessori school, or at least that’s the impression I have, the air
is different, the atmosphere is different, the reception is different, it is a more
tranquil environment, children are more tranquil, there is a life philosophy really,
you feel that you are useful to yourself and to the others. (Cynthia)
In summary, we found mainly professional choices very
close to the tradition of the vocationed woman, amply described
in the literature about teachers (BRUSCHINI; AMADO, 1988;
CARVALHO, 1999), or a later encounter with the enchantment and
gratification of the work, characteristics also associated to femininity,
because based on feelings and on non-financial rewards.
EMOTIONAL DEMANDS: “IT’S REALLY A LOT OF GUILT THAT WE FEEL”
For most of the interviewees, this kind of relation with the
career unfolded into practices full of dedication to the children, a
work marked by concerns, guilt and isolation, and by many actions
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that go beyond the strictly mandatory and beyond the paid working
hours, as already detailed. Manoela talked to us about her efforts to
cater for the individual needs of her pupils:
Last year I had a pupil with major motor coordination difficulties, he couldn’t
use scissors. By the end of year, he could, because I saw on the Internet, on my
Saturdays, an activity that involves a disc like this [gestures], which I cut, put in
the letters. […] I even gave this material to his teacher this year, so that she could
continue with this skill, developing this pinching movement. Then, I did this, I
brought Gooey Putty for him, I brought modelling clay for him. (Manoela)
Speaking about her ideal of teaching, Amanda emphasized the
importance of empathy, of the feelings involved in the labor of teaching:
So, I think the ideal teacher is a teacher that can see this, it’s the teacher that
accepts the challenge, and that can manage to see that that strange attitude the
pupil has, that indiscipline, that rejection, that the fear the pupil is showing, it’s
only him crying “help”, he’s asking you for help. So, that’s the ideal teacher, the
teacher that can see this. (Amanda)
Marlucy spoke explicitly about her frustrations and the
need for psychological support to face the emotional exigencies of
teaching, lived in a solitary way:
Right now, I have a literacy class and I have a pupil that does not learn, does not
move forward. I sit next to him, I do a thousand things and I end up frustrated,
I can’t really help. Then my therapist says: “He is one out of 25. What about
the other 24?” Isn’t it? “There are 10 pupils that are alphabetic, there are others
almost there, in the alphabetic, and you don’t see what you did for those children,
you only worry about that one?” So, it’s a lot, you know, what you have to… and
all by yourself; usually alone. (Marlucy)
It is not common, especially within the context of the sociology
of education, to pay attention to the degree of emotional exigency
involved in the pedagogical work. The study by Raewyn Connell (1985)
with teachers from secondary education in Australia is an exception,
highlighting that teaching can be considered to be a light work from
the physical point of view, but that in terms of emotional pressure it
is one of the most demanding. The author describes the classroom as
an absorbing, even suffocating environment, in view of the quantity
of emotional flow and relationships involved therein. For her, it is not
a matter of teachers’ choice whether or not to get involved, but rather
an inescapable dimension of the pedagogical work: “these relations
are their work and managing them constitutes a major part of their
labor process” (CONNELL, 1985, p. 117, author’s emphasis).
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This central element of the work of teachers has been
historically disregarded, remaining invisible as part of the competencies
to be individually developed by each teacher (CARVALHO, 1999).
Often, in the daily school life, this emotional capacity is attributed to
a femininity associated to maternity and perceived as a characteristic
inherent to women, as did some of the interviewees in the present
study. In academic studies, the emotional work generally appears only
when associated to illnesses, as in the studies about burnout (CODO,
1999; PIOLLI et al, 2015).
As many of the testimonies already mentioned show, when
discussing the emotional involvement of teachers and its consequence
both as stress and as gratification, these emotional dimensions have not
disappeared from São Paulo state schools, neither with the expansion
since the 1980s of discourses based on an idea of professionalism
(DAL’IGNA; SCHERER, 2017), nor with the later implementation
of goal-based management, standardized assessments and financial
rewards. In fact, these dimensions became even more invisible,
nameless, since they cannot be quantified and measured, and since
the discourse of professionalism hinders access to the maternal
metaphors. Everything indicates that new managerialism made the
teachers’ task of dealing with those emotions even more solitary,
because to the invisibility now one adds the incentive to individualism
and to competition. In the case of the teaching profession, this
can be one of the dimensions of what French sociologist Danièle
Linhart calls “subjective precarization” within this sphere of the new
forms of labor control, a feeling of not being able to find help with
problems at work, not even from hierarchical superiors or from the
overstretched workers collective bodies, a sentiment of isolation and
neglect (LINHART, 2014, p. 46).
Moreover, these emotional dimensions seem to suit fully the
control of the teaching work, both by guaranteeing commitment,
dedication and extra labor, and by making room for the manipulation
of guilt – both efficient forms to foster the workers self-control.
Garcia and Anadon (2009) pointed out that these forms of control
of the teaching work seek to “manage teachers from the inside out”
(p. 79) by taking as their object the subjectivity of educators and the
emotions in teaching. It is a stimulus to a “moral of self-accountability
and guilt on the part of teachers who, allied to the deterioration of
salaries and working conditions, has been contributing to intensify
and self-intensify the teaching work, and to generate frustration and
disillusionment” (2009, p. 65).
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The point we want to make is, therefore, that in the São
Paulo state school system new forms of management and control
of the work of teachers have combined with previously existing
characteristics that are associated to a feminine model of the teaching
profession. These labor models appear superposed and mixed,
sometimes linearly, sometimes contradictorily.
Such blending became manifest, materialized, in a notebook
that teacher Zuleica showed to the researchers soon after the
interview, explaining that she had it prepared for the starting school
year (field notes, 14/02/2017). On the first pages there were texts
about the teacher’s life, about the values she regarded as important,
two photographs of her, the drawing of a butterfly – which Zuleica
declared having done because she believed that everything could be
transformed in life –, and a clipping of an excerpt from Psalm 9110
from the Bible. Up to this point, the notebook looked like a diary,
a form culturally related to feminine traditions of writing. But after
that part, Zuleica put a list with the pupils of the class and, after that,
added a hand-written list of the abilities that would be evaluated in
the external assessments, and that should guide the planning of the
classes. It is as if, after turning the “feminine” pages of the notebook,
we jumped into the model of the new public management worker,
efficient and focused on measurable results.
The same combination of feeling and rationalized management,
of interior drive and external pressure appeared in Marlucy’s testimony:
It is really a lot of guilt that we feel. And my therapist tells me not to… Not to
carry this, to stop taking upon me things that aren’t mine […] But the pressure
comes all over you, we know. The State signed an agreement with a consultancy
company, I don’t know if you have heard about MMR? It is a project to improve
the results in the state school system. And then this consultancy asked for schools
to create a Commission to discuss and find out the root of the problems, of the
results of the school. […] Then you can imagine what the conclusion was, can’t
you? Teachers are not capacitated, teachers don’t do differentiated activities; it’s
always on the teacher, always. So, it is, like, a lot of pressure on us, no matter how
much you deal with it in here [puts her hand on her chest], it is difficult. (Marlucy)
Garcia and Anadon (2009) pointed out to the same dynamics
in the municipal school system they studied, with the official rhetoric
making strategic use of the practices of care and of the feelings of
guilt on the part of teachers to make them responsible for the results
and to guarantee the intensification of labor.
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AGAINST THE TIDE: “THE TROUBLE TO GO THERE AND FIND OUT WHO THAT
PUPIL IS”
Contradictorily, this same commitment, this same involvement
with each child, which opened the door to the precarization and
intensification of labor, and which historically contributed to
the overexploitation of teachers, are sources of criticism and
dissatisfaction with the standardized and controlled management
system. By emphasizing their responsibility for the children and not
for numbers, and by recalling the individual dimension of teaching,
by recovering the idea of an education that is not restricted to the
transmission of contents, part of the teachers articulates criticisms
to the current management of schools:
If you reach the target you get a bonus, the school gets a bonus; if you don’t reach
the target you don’t get it. And there’s also the flow, if there is a problem with
dropout you don’t get the bonus. So, it creates havoc in the school, going after the
pupils who are missing classes. And it is not out of concern for the pupil, it is
because of the bonus. (Marlucy, our emphasis)
Sometimes, we get some ready-made projects from the Education Board,
they say: “This project is to help non-alphabetic pupils.” But, sometimes, it is
something that doesn’t make much sense for my pupil. And then later comes
another demand, which is the expectation to put in practice that thing they sent
ready. […] Because that child, for the Education Board, she is just a number,
she’s just a little colored dot that is saying that she is still not alphabetic. The
Education Board doesn’t take the trouble to go there and find out who that
pupil is, what difficulty she has, who are her family; so, they don’t take that kind
of trouble. (Cecilia, our emphasis)
Even when they did not formulate criticisms explicitly,
teachers contested daily in their practices the focus on quantifiable
results, by valuing the affective relations with the pupils, and
by getting involved with their integral development, as in many
situations mentioned above. Therefore, if historically the femininity
attributed to teachers was associated to lack of professionalism,
and if it effectively displays tensions and contradictions, such as
that of being a channel for overexploitation, this same femininity
also involves an aversion to the standardization of teaching, to
competitive rationality, to the depersonalization of relations and to
the simplifications issuing from measurement.
Linhart (2009) warns against the difficulty to apprehend in a
sociological study the forms of resistance in labor, especially if one
tries to go beyond the collective movements, such as strikes and
stoppages, and the more evident individual actions such as absenteeism
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and sabotage. The author suggests that the analyses should look to the
distance “between the prescribed labor and the real labor” (2009, p.
71), which can be interpreted as a space of confrontation and dispute.
In particular, within the context of the new forms of labor regulation,
resistances would be more individual and even less visible, with the
new managerialism advancing over the practical knowledge and the
subjectivity of workers and restricting the space for resistance.
In the case of the teachers of the first years of education
in the São Paulo state school system, Administration has managed
to standardize and control efficaciously the part of their work that
involves the transmission of knowledge. The work prescribed to
them is focused on contents and specific cognitive abilities that will
be measured in standardized tests. But many insist – at the expense
of their free time, of their sleep and even of their emotional balance
– on taking care of the pupils, in caring for them in other aspects, and
in perceiving them as unique, with their own rhythms and necessities
that do not follow standards. On the other hand, the career prescribed
to teachers is based on targets, on measurable results and rewarding,
but they insist in placing financial reward in second place, in enjoying
their work, and in seeing teaching as a way to change the reality
around them. It is worth recalling that this set of characteristics is
part of a pedagogical ideal gestated and reproduced within the school
– both in formation courses and in the school culture – even when it
is referred to from the viewpoint of maternity and domesticity.
Feminist thinking has been highlighting that one of the
movements of expansion of the capital in contemporaneity is the
mercantilization of areas seen as feminine, and hitherto little touched
by its rules and logic, such as care (MORINI, 2008). The practices of
integral and individualized attention of teachers can be understood
in this context as acts of resistance to the logic of the market and a
restatement of values seen as feminine that have marked the teaching
activity for children for decades. They are often contradictory values,
suffused with conservatisms of gender and class, but still they are
part of a refusal, albeit individual, unclear, and not always evident
as resistance even for the teacher herself. In the current context
of the state schools of São Paulo, caring means to mark a distance
between the prescribed teaching labor and the real labor. It is a
practice of autonomy, a form of teachers not letting the mechanisms
of managerial administration control entirely their subjectivity; since
they work out of love, they find accomplishment in their activity, they
have hope. It is the way of making sure that the air in the school is
still breathable, for them and for the children.
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25
Teachers from the Guarulhos (SP) municipal school system
interviewed by Penna (2017) considered that their work was the
result of an ideal and gave them the chance to “intervene in society
positively in some way” (PENNA, 2017, p. 63). They commented
explicitly on the space at their disposal to organize their work and
declared enjoying the freedom they still had in the classroom. “You
are free to speak, you are a thinker”, said one of them (PENNA,
2017, p. 64). The author indicates that this space of freedom refers
to going beyond the teaching of contents and working with the moral
education of students – something we interpret as a practice of care.
Lastly, in the autonomy of the old vocationed teacher, that
closed the door of the classroom behind her and made her decisions,
there was also the affirmation of an intellectual, active and relational
dimension of the teaching activity. When teachers today reaffirm
this tradition, are they not telling us that they “miss” this power, are
they not talking about the preservation of this interstice of freedom
and of significant work?
CONCLUSIONS AND NEW QUESTIONS
In 1999, the study conducted by one of us concluded by
stating the need to make explicit the practice of the care in schools as
an intrinsic part of the teaching activity. And also, that there should
be a collective critical reflection about this, so that relations of care
were moved away from their reference to maternity and were not
a source of oppression or disqualification for those who take care.
But it was already foreseen that this utopia was becoming more and
more distant due to the “current emphasis of educational policies on
technique, on efficiency and competitiveness to be reached through
the saving of resources” (CARVALHO, 1999, p. 235). The avalanche
of new managerialism policies that swept across the state schools
of São Paulo only confirmed that prognosis, delegitimizing even
further the caring practices of teachers. In these circumstances, the
restatement of the dedication, of the idealistic work and of the full
attention to students acquires a sense of resistance that they did not
have for the teachers interviewed by Luís Pereira (1969). And we
could ask ourselves if teachers today are not valuing even more those
practices of care precisely for representing a space of autonomy.
In this context, it seems reasonable to suppose that the ever
more frequent proposals to define socio-emotional competencies to
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26
be developed under a standard curriculum, measured and assessed in a
centralized manner in the public school systems, represent an advance
of new managerialism over this grey area. Present in the personnel
departments of companies since the mid-1990s, the trainings about
emotional intelligence, as well as tests and assessments of socioemotional competencies have already been incorporated into the
school curriculum in various countries, and have been proposed and
tested in different public school systems in Brazil, or included under
different labels in documents such as the National Common Curricular
Basis (BNCC), always under the auspices of organizations and
institutes linked to businesses. There are, thus, strong indications that
the dispute around curricula based on social-emotional competencies
(or, less directly, on the so-called integral formation), which transform
the dealing with emotions into measurable abilities, will be decisive
to keep or otherwise lose this territory of relative freedom today
exercised as a practice of care by the teachers.
Lastly, we can conclude that in the teaching work in the
first years of schooling, dimensions considered as feminine are
ancient but still quite clear; that they can give rise to mechanisms
of control and exploitation of labor, as well as originate resistance
and opposition. It is not a simple replacement of working models,
neither just an instrumentalization of characteristics seen as feminine
in order to guarantee the overexploitation of the work of teachers. It
is about living together and combining these models of teacher labor
constituting new old working relations.
To know how the future forms of collective articulation
and resistance in public schools will be belongs to the realm of
the imponderable, considering the changes brought about by
new managerialism that make forms of control advance over the
subjectivity of teachers, that individualize even more practices and
responsibilities and push the caring, the idealism and the pleasure
of teaching to the field of the nameless, since they are (still) not
quantifiable. But we dare say that the collective opposition to new
managerialism will have much to gain if it does not abandon the
territory of the subjectivity of teachers to be controlled by the
uses made of it by guilt and isolation; and if the practices of care
to be controlled by means of curricula based on social-emotional
competencies. Lastly, perhaps new forms of collective action may
take into account the love of teaching and the practices of care
already existing, and may derive support, in a critical manner, from
this reinvented feminine tradition.
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NOTES
1
This research has been sponsored by CNPq, process 303873/2014-0.
We use the term feminization in the sense of the association of characteristics socially seen
as feminine, and not in the sense of the presence of women.
2
3
In view of the predominance of women both in the teaching profession as a whole and in
the group interviewed, teachers will be referred in this text in the feminine. All names are
fictitious. All interviewees signed a term of free informed consent.
Published only in 1969, the book by Luís Pereira results from his doctoral thesis presented
to FFLCH-USP in 1961. The author informs that the fieldwork was conducted in 1959.
4
All interviewees were asked to classify themselves in racial terms using the IBGE categories
(white, black, brown, yellow, indigenous). We also recorded here other race categories, when
interviewees indicated disagreement with that classification.
5
6
This aspect was developed in Carvalho, 2018.
7
The precarious contracts of teachers in the São Paulo state school system presented
different nomenclatures through time. Currently, there are temporary teachers, occasional
teachers – that substitute for colleagues – and stable teachers, which acquired stability in
their posts without public exams by force of the 1988 Constitution. (MOURA, 2013).
8
Not to mention domestic chores, which implied even more working hours at home for all
of them, including the two men interviewed.
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9
It is worth recalling that Cynthia was also the teacher that spoke more directly against the
association between teaching and maternity, as seen above.
“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High//will rest in the shadow of the
Almighty.//I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,//my God, in whom I
trust.”//Surely he will save you//from the fowler’s snare//and from the deadly pestilence.”
10
Submission: 12/06/2018
Approbation: 14/08/2018
Contact:
Marília Pinto de Carvalho
Av. da Universidade, nº 308
São Paulo|SP|Brasil
CEP 05.508-040
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