Enem needs shielding against political heat – 11/11/2023 – Education

It was only after the students finished taking the Enem test on the first day, last Sunday (5), that the fuss surrounding the exam, the main gateway to federal universities, began.

Concentrated on text interpretation, the test, year after year, government after government, faces criticism from a biased selection of topics, from the right or the left. Under Jair Bolsonaro (PL), he vetoed questions about the military dictatorship. Now, under Lula (PT), he is accused of favoring a left-wing vision, with issues critical to agribusiness.

Despite the noise, Enem, which will have its second day of exams this Sunday (12), is a respected exam in the country, adopted as one of the entry points even by reputable private institutions, such as FGV and Insper. Even USP, which is state-owned and has its traditional selection of students through Fuvest, reserves part of its places for Enem.

This does not mean, on the other hand, that it is not necessary to improve the exam model, modernize it, create or reinforce mechanisms in order to prevent the political heat of the moment from imposing itself on the test, in the view of educators consulted by the Sheet.

“The criticisms that the test is ideological have nothing to do with this or that government, but with the format for selecting the items [questões]”, says Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro, who was previously executive secretary of the MEC, president of Inep (1997-2002), the body responsible for Enem, and is president of the National Association for Educational Assessment and member of the National Education Council.

Although the questions are prepared by teachers hired for this task, Castro emphasizes that the Inep teams are responsible for defining the selection notices and training these teachers, as well as choosing the items. The questions are tested with students and then entered into a bank, from which the questions that will make up the exam are selected each year.

“The test is kept in a safe in the maximum security room. Neither the president of Inep nor the Minister of Education are authorized to read the questions. Only the Inep technical team responsible for Enem has access to the exam”, he explains.

The larger the technical team and the expert committees to support it, the more plural the exam will be, in your assessment. “The way the item bank is produced needs to be rethought, have more researchers, use artificial intelligence”, he argues. Castro suggests modernizing the test, with the inclusion of essay questions. “A test with only multiple choice questions is late.”

The current president of Inep, Manuel Palácios, said at the Education Committee of the Chamber of Deputies last Wednesday (8) that the exam process, from the call for teachers to the production of the test, lasts three years.

According to him, 86% of the items were produced during the previous government. Palácios, however, did not clarify whether the percentage encompasses issues that have become controversial, involving agribusiness. On Monday (6), the Agricultural Parliamentary Front published a note calling for the annulment of two issues.

In question 70 of the blank test, soybean cultivation is related to deforestation in the Amazon. In 89, a text on agribusiness states that natural resources, such as water and seeds, become private property, and criticizes the mechanization of production in the field. The statement asks the candidate to indicate the alternative that the elements described in the text “demonstrate”, with that word.

“There is not a demonstration there, but an argument. The question could not pass with the word ‘demonstra'”, says USP economics professor Reynaldo Fernandes, former president of Inep (2005-2009), who sees a “failure technique” in the statement.

Fernandes, however, argues that the Enem test must provide a sample of what is taught in each area and what the main experts think. The debate about a possible ideological approach, therefore, should not be carried out around Enem. “If you are right-wing and think that geography has a Marxist bias in Brazil, you go to university and discuss it there, which is the environment for this debate.”

The current president of Inep countered the criticism by saying that the texts are there to be interpreted and not for students to agree with them.

The argument does not fully convince the Associação De Olho no Material Escolar, which advocates for more positive representations of agribusiness in education.

Leticia Jacintho, president of the group, agrees with the consideration that the questions are interpretative and do not necessarily reflect the views of those who prepared them. But she defends that bodies like Inep are attentive to other views. “The Enem test is a consequence of the teaching materials, I would be surprised if it were different”, she says.

A study commissioned by the group from the Fundação Instituto de Administração, linked to USP, evaluated the representations of agribusiness in 94 textbooks and listed 160 negative mentions of the sector, compared to 59 positive and 126 neutral.

Amidst several progressive texts, the test brought, in question 88 of the blank test, an excerpt from a conservative article, written in 1853, which expresses nostalgia for the times when women did not learn to read and write and “that’s why they were not in charge They didn’t even receive notes.” The statement only asks for interpretation.

“The text is submitted with the intention of revealing the student’s understanding of what was presented”, said Palácios. “The ability to understand diverse texts, with varied and divergent positions, is fundamental to the development of critical thinking and success in higher education.”

Report from Sheet of 2021, with a statistical analysis, showed that questions that caused controversy among Bolsonarists were efficient for evaluating skills.

For Gustavo Mônaco, director of Fuvest and member of the USP University Council, Enem has a clear proposal, with an emphasis on textual interpretation, and executes it well. “It’s an exam that demands important skills. There may be a problem with one question or another, but all entrance exams are subject to this.”

At Fuvest, interpretation is also sought, not with the same burden as Enem, and, according to Mônaco, “normally linked to basic education content”. “I don’t consider Enem to be better or worse than Fuvest, they are exams that seek different assessment paths, and that’s not a bad thing,” she says. “The fact that we use different entry points at USP leads to a greater diversity of students.”

Insper, in addition to its own entrance exam, accepts the Enem score in its first phase of the selection process, as well as the Knowledge Olympics, the SAT (the main US exam), and the IB international diploma. The second phase involves interviews and group dynamics to measure socio-emotional skills.

“We have already done a lot of analysis of the Enem results. It is a well-constructed assessment, generating reliable proficiency scales, with IRT [método estatístico para detectar chutes e definir a pontuação de cada questão a partir do nível de erros e acertos]”, says Guilherme Martins, president of Insper.