O anti-intelectualismo na escola pública no contexto neoliberal: uma análise do novo Ensino Médio.

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes how the New High School (NEM), by introducing training tracks and subjects such as the “Life Project,” reinforces a logic of individual responsibility and market-driven training to the detriment of reflective education that serves the interests of the working class. The research stems from the need to understand how discourses that devalue scientific knowledge and critical thinking are articulated with educational policies focused on technical and market-oriented training. The research problem consists of investigating which economic, social, political, cultural, and ideological factors have conditioned the spread of anti-intellectualism in public schools. The objective is to investigate how these factors sustain the advancement of anti-intellectualism in education. The methodology is bibliographic and documentary, emphasizing the analysis of classic and contemporary authors discussing education, intellectuality, ideology, and neoliberalism, in addition to the content provided by the State of Paraná to public school teachers for the “Life Project” component. The analysis of the state network’s teaching materials reveals the insertion of meritocracy, coaching, and self-management discourses, which replace systematized scientific knowledge with market language, emptying the school’s social function. Anti-intellectualism thrives in political and social environments and propagates under the aegis of capital and neoliberalism. Thus, it is necessary to resort to neoliberal classics and their theories and narratives about education within the public school scenario. It is essential to debate the way capital precaritizes the public school, rendering it reproductive and alienating. The New High School represents a training project aimed at market adaptation rather than critical and emancipatory education, deepening inequalities and weakening the intellectual perspective of training. As a counterpoint, the research presents Historical-Critical Pedagogy and the Unitary School as pathways to an education that is both intellectual and emancipatory, focused on the interests of the working class, which could cease the exploitation and inequalities perpetrated by neoliberal capitalism.