A reforma do ensino médio na rede pública estadual de educação da Bahia: uma análise a partir da arena política

Abstract

This research analyzed the contradictions and mediations in the political production arena of the New High School, which mark its regulation in the state network of Bahia, considering its contexts of interest and dispute. This analysis also considered the process of reconfiguring the State, as well as the actions and influence of non-governmental actors. The study was guided by theoretical perspective of historical and dialectical materialism, constituting an empirical research, with a qualitative approach. As procedures, documents were analyzed and interviews were carried out. Initially, the bases and ideological assumptions of the actors who influenced the production of mentioned policy were investigated. It was possible to identify their relationship with neoliberal reason and managerialism, in accordance with neoliberal-based Human Capital Theory and Globally Structured Agenda for Education. Next, the influence of education entrepreneurs in the arena of production of secondary education reform was characterized, and three elements in dispute were identified: distance from democratic management; search for public financing to serve private interests; and formation of man of a new type. It was even found that many actors who appear on the national scene also worked in the state. It is understood, therefore, that influence by organizations, such as the Lemann and Vivo Telefônica Foundations, unfolded into recommendations and definitions coming from the federal sphere and the National Council of Education Secretaries. Finally, the conceptions, contradictions and mediations in this arena were characterized, highlighting the specificities of the reform in Bahia and its conditions. Therefore, the study confirms that national policy follows a neoliberal bias of Pedagogy of Skills, while in Bahia, the proposal assumes an approach guided by Historical-Critical Pedagogy; demonstrates that state’s adherence to pilot schools project reiterates that induction of policies is conditioned on its financing; and reveals the contradictions in educational policies for secondary education and duality between confronting inequalities, guaranteeing social rights and complying with neoliberalism and its managerialist characteristics. In this scenario, collective actors, acting in a network, created favorable conditions to materialize the new reason in education, fostering class thinking in civil society spaces. Such action, joint and complementary in outsourcing of government actions, occurred organizedly, without dispersion or decentralization of power regarding the most influential actors, which orchestrate the production of policy through concrete and authoritative action in pedagogical actions, despite the absence of materiality in formalizing partnerships. Then, the presence of expressions of resistance in reference documents studied represents a marking of place by social movements in construction of the mentioned policy, while it is possible to perceive elements of discontinuity and rapprochement with neoliberal orientations. Even with such expressions of resistance, there are aspects of the policy that must be questioned, regarding possible ambiguities, in the search for reconciliation of different political-pedagogical perspectives, resulting in hybridism. So, the splits in the reform project show that there are confrontations, and not an inexorable path.