This article presents a reflection about the possibilities and contradictions of the insertion of school education in the rehabilitation programs of the State of São Paulo Penal System. Prisons, their norms, procedures and values adhere to the absolute primacy of domination and control of the incar- cerated mass. It follows that the maintenance of internal order and discipline are transfigured into the penal organization’s primary purpose. The programs and activities regarded as "re-educative" fit into this working logic, guiding their actions and objectives by the need to subjugate the punished persons, adjusting them to the social system of prison. The inmate’s resistance to control is, however, patent. Education does not, by any means, remain neutral in this process (struggle) of subjugation and resistance. Its methodological assumptions and its daily practices can contribute to establish school as the succeeding resource in the preservation and development of persons, in the interstices of the domination process. The article tries to outline some possibilities of education so that the prerogatives of penal management do not shatter educative practices, prescribing its actions. In doing that, it seeks to indicate an alternative so that incarcerated persons, even under the hostile conditions they face, have the later opportunity to produce culture and knowledge, showing paths to a human development that allows them to designate the world present and future, in a continuous act of creation and re-creation, signification and re-signification.
Adult education; Penal system; Rehabilitation
