A Educação das Crianças Pequenas nas Cirandas Infantis do MST

This article discusses kids’ riddles on permanent and itinerant MST (a movement of landless rural workers in Brazil) aiming at investigating this practice of education experienced by children whose parents are struggling for a place to live. Riddles are part of non-formal education held by cooperatives, training centers and the MST itself. Such practice aims at organizing children in landless communities, developing educational work, whose perspective is human emancipation. The Itinerant riddles happen in some activities of the MST, such as courses, marches, meetings, congresses and the permanent riddles are those operating in MST’s settlements, schools, training centers etc. The theoretical framework used in this research was Florestan Fernandes (2004), Gobbi (2004); Finco (2004), Meszaros (2005), as well as the materials produced by MST. The methodological procedures have been defined in order to understand the functioning of these riddles, their nature and development on their relations. The data was collected through documentary research, observation and a semi-structured interview. The survey results indicate that riddles are spaces that allow children to participate in the community since their childhood. Besides, they configure themselves by building the collective childhood in which children learn to share objects starting from simple things such as toys, pencils, snacks, up to sharing community life with other homeless children as the maroon, Indians and homeless. They struggle against social inequalities, thus multiply the collective victories and, fill the countryside and the city of joy, dreams, utopia, with the possibility of building an emancipator education, linked to a project of the working class, for all children in the countryside and the city. REVISTA MULTIPLAS LEITURAS Revista Multiplas Leituras, v. 3, n. 1, p. 103-118, jan. jun. 2010 105