Sujeitos da EJA: os desafios e as razões para voltar a estudar

Abstract

The theme of the final course of the Licentiate’s degree of the Bilingual Pedagogy Libras/ Portuguese is about EJA students, their challenges and the reasons for returning to school. EJA students are people of different ages (young people, adults and elderly people), from different regions of Brazil, men and women, who had their studies interrupted and seek to have their right to study recognized despite many difficulties and obstacles encountered along the way. The objective of the TCC was to understand the reasons that lead EJA students to return to school and the challenges they face. The specific objectives of the study were: a) to understand the reasons that lead EJA students to return to school; b) to identify the main challenges faced by EJA students to continue in school. The methodology used in the study was bibliographic; we read texts, articles and research on the subject to achieve the proposed objectives. The theoretical framework was formed by authors of EJA studies: Haddad and Di Pierro (2000), Paulo Freire (2006), Costa, Alvares and Barreto (2006), Gomes and Silva (2018), Eiterer, Dias and Costa (2014), Coura, Eiterer and Soares (2023), Caldas (2016), among others. As a result, we realized that different subjects seek school for different reasons and face their own challenges: a) the elderly seek school for: socialization, not to be isolated, learn to read to improve their daily lives and the challenges faced are: fear of making mistakes, mobility and health problems, lack of family support, conflicts with younger EJA students; b) young black people seek out school because they need formal, more dignified work, so they turn to school to fight for better living conditions for themselves and their families. The challenges they face are: racism inside and outside of school, financial difficulties, lack of commitment on their own to EJA, discouragement with the teaching methodology in EJA, conflict with older students; c) women seek out EJA to: achieve autonomy, not be dependent, get a better job, stop doing housework, give their sons and daughters a future. The challenges they face are: work overload due to domestic activities, machismo in the prohibition of studying by their husbands and partners, and lack of support from their bosses; and finally, deaf people seek EJA to learn Libras, learn Portuguese, live in a community and have a deaf identity, have more autonomy and get a job and know their rights, and the main challenges are: not knowing how to communicate in Libras, only home gestures, lack of family support to attend school, schools that do not have interpreters and lack of bilingual schools that have EJA.