THE AESTHETIC, POLITICAL AND EPISTEMIC PROTAGONISM OF CHILDREN IN THE SCHOOL SPACE: NARRATIVES OF AN EXPERIENCE OF ART EDUCATION
Art teaching; Escolas-Parque; Child artists; Child protagonists; Decolonization of education.
In this thesis, I analyze the protagonism of elementary school students from Escola Parque 313/314 Sul, in the city of Brasília, in artistic production processes. Ethnographing my teaching practice in Arts, carried out between 2012 and 2019, with children aged 6 to 11 years, I report and analyze four experiences developed in this period. I seek to demonstrate how the processes of creation of works of art can constitute situations that promote the aesthetic, political and epistemic protagonism of children in the school space, confronting the adult-centric pedagogical perspectives that relegate them to a place of cognitive puerility. Arguing in defense of the protagonism of children, the thesis also contributes to point out ways of decolonizing the teaching of the Arts. For the development of the analysis, I mobilize theoretical-conceptual contributions on childhoods, art and the teaching of art, prioritizing non-northern/Eurocentric perspectives, such as the Freirean, the decolonial and in decolonial perspective (authors who do not call themselves decolonial). Consistent with the political-epistemic perspective adopted here, which recognizes the agency of children, the thesis will be written in a narrative language accessible to my main interlocutors — the children. To this end, I use a theoretical contribution that deals with insurgent writing and literature written for children.