The new high school in question – 04/14/2023 – Sou Ciência

In recent weeks, there has been a wide mobilization of sectors of education to indicate the weaknesses that characterize the Reform and the implementation of the New Secondary School (NEM) and ask for its repeal. There is a reduction in the workload dedicated to general education, exclusion of humanities as disciplines in the new curriculum, inclusion of an abstract “life project”, offer of electives that contribute little or nothing to the formation and variety of training itineraries to be chosen and that do not materialize in practice due to a lack of teachers in public schools, where more than 80% of young Brazilians are enrolled. The Lula government is undecided on what course of action to take and has suspended the implementation of the new model for 60 days.

It is worth remembering that, for years now, the training process of the new generations and the school path of young people have given rise to fierce disputes in society and have been the focus of intense debates in the field of education. There are disagreements around the definition of the social function of secondary schools, the reasons that lead only some young people to succeed, the reasons for dropping out, the enormous social inequalities converted into school inequalities, the impact of educational policies on the quality of systems and teaching networks, among many others.

These are tensions that show that there are different interests and educational visions underlying the restructuring of this teaching stage, indicating different, often contradictory, ways to guarantee the formation of young Brazilians and their right to basic education, necessary for the full exercise of citizenship. Part of these visions, by certain agents, are driven by economic interests, direct or indirect, of education as a business and of the student as a workforce.

Only an in-depth and broadened debate, especially with high school students, about what is aspired to as comprehensive training, educational quality and socialization, will allow the establishment of guidelines that put this right into effect, enabling the conception and provision of schools with quality and interest for young people . And high school uprisings in 2015, in São Paulo, and 2016, in Paraná, with repercussions throughout Brazil, showed that young people want to assume more protagonism in their education and experiment with new ways of using and experiencing the school space. They have new issues, interests and views that need to be recognized and understood from a political and pedagogical perspective.

The history of the stage that today we call secondary education, in our country, has been full of Reforms idealized by specialists. All of them, if I’m not mistaken, predominantly focused on proposals for curricular restructuring, with changes in disciplines, emphasis on certain areas of knowledge and the adoption of new teaching methodologies, as if only these modifications could guarantee the much-desired educational quality.

More than insufficient, these Reforms reveal a kind of “identity crisis” rooted in this educational stage. A crisis that is based on the division of social classes, a fracture that segments the school between those that prepare the youth elite (conductor!) for the continuity of studies at a higher level in good quality universities, therefore with a focus on intellectual training , and others that prepare the rest of the youth for professional life and immediate insertion in the world of work, via technical training (to the children of workers).

The certainty underlying this eternal and irreconcilable tension is that secondary education is not a stage of schooling in itself, but must serve the future of young people (and the country). For this reason, it segments destinations in advance via curricula, parallel courses of study, institutional barriers, private and public education and, obviously, differences in the social background of students.

However, the typical age of young people enrolled in this stage of education – between 15 and 18 years old – puts young people in schools crossed by intense and overwhelming doubts, a lot of curiosity, restlessness, vibrant spirit, antennas linked to diverse interests and open to countless possibilities of come to be, without it being necessary to fully define this question in the present. At the same time, they are, or should be, faced with old and unresolved issues of Brazilian society (extreme inequality, structural racism, return of hunger, pattern of violence and segregation, etc.) , new media, environmental collapse, change in the energy matrix, financial globalization, crisis in the world of work, etc.).

For this very reason, the discussion about secondary education should go far beyond the mere instructioneven because, like it or not, it encompasses the entire educational process, which implies (in)tense interpersonal relationships and different worldviews, which need to have a space for full manifestation and debate within them.

All schools should be open and provide the most varied experiences for this pulsating youth – both intellectually and culturally, politically, economically and socially -, enabling reflection, the development of lively consciences and a lot of human sensitivity for the challenges of the present and the future.

Replacing these multiple relationships, and all their complexity, with a instruction robotized, with routines controlled by time and various bureaucracies, meaningless, with standardized and uninteresting teaching materials, which immobilize teachers, is synonymous with killing the intelligence and life that pulsates in the school, putting in its place something much worse, as it has showing the repeated episodes of violence in schools across the country.

Furthermore, what is at stake in the current High School Reform is little like the “old disputes”, mentioned above, about the utilitarian nature of its training, that is, the clash between intellectual training and technical training. There also seems to be no initiative that seeks to reconcile these formations.

If the “new” curriculum model, in the cold letter of the law, claims to promote innovations and elective paths, the raw reality of public schools shows its true purpose: the unprecedented precariousness of the curriculum, which would make any good specialist blush faith that defends the technical training for the future of the children of the working classes.

In addition to not finding concrete conditions for implementation, in Brazilian schools, training itineraries were proposed without any planning for teacher hiring and/or their redistribution that minimally responded to these elective pseudo-trajectories. Also, improvements in working conditions and teachers’ salaries, readjustments in school buildings, adequate number of students per class, need for equipment and innovative teaching materials, in short, minimum conditions were not foreseen.

If the precariousness of the curriculum and the material conditions of secondary education do not favor young people’s entry into the labor market, what will the possibility of accessing Higher Education say.

The developments of the current Reform imposed, in fact, a kind of ban on the old debate on training. It is urgent to revert the installed chaos, which has already been perceived at least by the MEC. May other authorities do the same. And that, once the dramatic moment is over, it will be possible to resume, on other bases, the debate on the identity of secondary education, its purpose in itselfin addition to segmentation, and the appropriate processes for training all young Brazilians