Youth and Adult Education is a teaching modality whose objective is to allow adults who do not had the opportunity to attend school at the conventional age, can resume their studies and catch up lost.
Offering the EJA modality nowadays requires a new thinking about educational policies and proposals for (re)inclusion of these students in public education networks in our country. What has been thought so far is that the pedagogical work developed in this teaching segment should be eminently alphabetizing. However, literacy is only the first part of the process. What one cannot think is that only literacy can guarantee the social development of this student.
For an adult who resumes his studies, the greatest desire is to prepare for work, to have autonomy and to do well professionally. The methodological approach in this sense should not be developed with the same parameters used to work with children. A student aged 30 years, for example, returning to the school years corresponding to the 4th year of elementary school will not be interested in an activity that is characteristically childish. Hence the need to address equivalent content, but with an adult language that meets what this audience wants.
Education is the biggest and best tool for managing change, through it man can better understand himself and the world in which he lives. In this way, education itself must be the first to accept and monitor development and its specificities, that is, renew and promote interaction with the new.
Brazil has already taken a big step in issues that refer to youth and adult literacy, although we are still within the schools of countries with the highest rate of illiterates. And the problem, as already mentioned, is that adults who come to school do not just want to learn to read and write, they want and need to be updated with the social context in which they live and belong.
The school gap is large, according to Law 9.394/96 art. 37 “the education of young people and adults should be articulated, preferably, with professional education, in the form of regulation", in this way, and if what is provided for by law really happened, we would have many more young people within the schools. As a result of unemployment, the search for vocational and technical education has increased significantly. Young people want to work, but lack qualifications and opportunities, especially to complete basic education and have partial mastery of new technologies.
An example of this reality can be seen in the PROEJA modality courses, of the Federal Institute of Education Science and Technology (IFGOIAS) of the city of Goiânia, which on 27/04/2009 launched 90 vacancies for courses in this modality. Demand is great, supply is small, not to mention the resources used to bring this information to the population. The proposal is very good, but it lacks more dedication, the majority of the population is not even aware of the opportunity, and those who remain face strong competition.
In short, the important thing is that we (re)think our concept of education for young people and adults; They have a hunger to read and a desire to learn, but in a broader way, characteristic of those who already have life experience, who need much more than the writing itself and conventional reading needs above all to read between the lines imposed by the issue of being and fully exercising citizenship.
Do not stop now... There's more after the advertising ;)
By Giuliano Freitas
Graduated in Pedagogy
Brazil School Team
education - Brazil School
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
FREITAS, Giuliano Martins de. "EJA and preparation for work"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/educacao/a-eja-preparo-para-trabalho.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
