Characteristics and perceptions of students in a rural school in Selvíria (MS), about the life on the field and the future

Abstract

The countryside education seeks to value and redeem the culture of people who live in it through contents and methodologies that works students’day by day. This research with the students of Escola Municipal Rural São Joaquim Pólo, in Selvíria (MS), aimed to understand students' views about the countryside and their future projects, as residents and children of settled family farmers and rural workers from surrounding farms. The research involved 63 students from 4^th, 5^th, 8^th and 9^th grades who answered a questionnaire, and students of 4^th and 5^th grades has still made a drawing depicting the life they led on countryside. The results of the survey showed that most students enjoy several aspects of country life, but the lack of minimal infrastructure in the settlements and farms, and also the daily struggle of their relatives working without financial return enough to improve living conditions, leads almost all, to discard the work as a farmer, and the majority to want a future in the city. Among the younger students there is less refusal to continue in the countryside, possibly because they still have a more playful relationship with the rural environment.