Educação Infantil no Brasil: aspectos históricos e os avanços efetivados a partir da Constituição Federal de 1988

Abstract

This research deals with Early Childhood Education in its historical and legal aspects, with the objective of identifying and analyzing the normatization of children's right to education and the contributions made from the promulgation of the 1988 Federal Constitution to attend them in Brazil, based on its laws, public policies and official documents applicable to Early Childhood Education, such as: CF/88, LDB (BRASIL, 1996), RCNEI (BRASIL, 1998), DCNEI (BRASIL, 1999; 2010), PNE (BRASIL, 2001; 2014) and BNCC (BRASIL, 2017). The investigative process was carried out by means of bibliographic research of literature review on the theme, based mainly on: Oliveira (2002; 2020), Filipim; Rossi; Rodrigues (2017); Guimarães (2017); Marques; Pegoraro; Paschoal; Machado (2009), Mendes (2015) and Nunes; Corsino; Didonet (2011). The achievement of recognition in the constitutional text of the right to education of children in daycare centers and preschools as being a duty of the State was the result of the sum of struggles for the democratization of the school and social movements for daycare centers. CF/88 brought advances to Early Childhood Education, inaugurating the institutionalization process of this stage of education, as a universal right inherent to citizenship, proclaiming the right of children to education in daycare centers and preschools, opening doors for the regulation of this right. Early childhood education was incorporated into the education system and basic education, figuring as its first stage, whose purpose is the integral development of the subject, in the social, physical, affective and cognitive aspects, conferring, once and for all, an educational character to the teaching and learning process of children. After CF/88, the identity of Early Childhood Education came to be built with a view of the child as a historical subject, however, the process of consolidation and realization of children's right to education is not yet over, as we face the diminished financial investments scaled and applied in this stage of education. The social and universal right to the education of children will only be realized when there are none outside the educational institutions, whether in daycare centers or preschools. When carrying out a historical retrospective in Brazil, we identified that the care given to children was directly linked to both the political, economic and social scenario of each era, as well as the conception of children and childhood of each period. Such assistance started with a charitable character, had an assistentialist, hygienist and compensatory bias until reaching the right to education expressed in the Brazilian Major Law, when the assistance became the responsibility of the educational sector, with an educational character.