Abstract

This article analyzes high school education reform and its impact on the education project on those who work for a living. By analyzing Law 13.415/2017, recent statistics and the new proposal for curricular organization, arguments will be identified that point to the flexibilization of high school education as an expression of the pedagogical project of the flexible accumulation system, whose logic continues to be the unequal distribution of knowledge, but in a differentiated way. The aim is the formation of flexible subjectivities submitted to the precarity of work, naturalizing instability, insecurity and deregulation for an alleged autonomy of choice. From the ontological viewpoint, the article shows that the high school education reform responds to the alignment of the flexible accumulation system formation. In epistemological terms, it compares the conception of praxis that guided the drafting of the curricular guidelines in 2012 with the dimensions of individualism, fragmentation, presentism and pragmatism present in the new guidelines. Based on the analysis, the author emphasizes the need to create other forms of curricular organization in the exercise of autonomy by the school as an alternative for the integral formation of young individuals.

Key words
High school education reform; Flexibilization of high school education; Pedagogy in the flexible accumulation system

Introduction

In 2017, still under the government of President Michel Temer, high school education underwent profound reforms, with a significant impact on vocational education. Without any broad debate with teachers, entities and the scientific community in general, within a short period of time Law N. 6840/2014 (2013, in its initial version, and December 2014, in its substitutive version),the editions of Provisional Measure N. 746 (September 2016) and the new Law N. 13,415 (February 2017) culminated in the High School reform, which was fully approved. The questioning carried out by the progressive sectors of civil society, particularly by the National High School Defense Movement, and the high school students' movement, was completely disregarded.

It is important to highlight that the debate taking place during the course of this process that culminated in the high school reform after the promulgation of Law N. 13,415 / 2017 once again expressed the contradiction between public and private interests, which then materialized as the opposition between rigidity and flexibility. On the one hand, are the institutions that represent the private sectors that expanded the spaces in the discussion of public policies, with the support and the conceptual identity of the leaders who were part of the Ministry of Education (MEC) at the time and the Council of Education Secretariats (CONSED). The position defended by these sectors was the flexibilization of the formative pathways, so as to allow the students, while guaranteeing the common national base, to either choose to deepen their studies in an academic area, or choose the technical and professional formation, basedon their trajectories and life projects.

For this group, the 2012 High School Curriculum Guidelines¹1 Brasil. Conselho Nacional de Educação. Resolução nº 2, de 30 de janeiro de 2012. Dispõe sobre as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para o Ensino Médio. Diário Oficial da União 2012; 31 jan. - DCNEM / 2012 are stringent, since they establish a single, disciplinary course, with an excessive number of curricular components, based on what the flexibilization of the courses was proposed.

On the other hand are the entities and intellectuals who have historically sought to build an education project that would meet the interests of the working class by organizing a curriculum that would integrate, in an organic and consistent way, the dimensions of science, technology, of culture and work, as ways of giving meaning to school knowledge, exactly as proposed by the DCNEM / 2012¹1 Brasil. Conselho Nacional de Educação. Resolução nº 2, de 30 de janeiro de 2012. Dispõe sobre as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para o Ensino Médio. Diário Oficial da União 2012; 31 jan..

It is needless to say that the prevailing position was that of curricular flexibilization, expressed in a curricular organization that admits different paths; from a maximum of 1,800 hours dedicated to the Common National Curricular Base, including the diversified part, the young individual, to “fulfill their life project”, can choose one among the different areas: languages and their technologies, mathematics and their technologies, nature sciences and their technologies, applied human and social sciences, and technical and vocational training.

The first consideration regarding this curricular organization proposal is its characteristic 'watering down' of the formation; In this sense, the meaning of flexibilization is superficiality, simplification. This is due to the fact that the workload for overall training is reduced to a maximum of 1,800 hours, with only two compulsory curricular components throughout the trajectory: Portuguese language and mathematics; the other curricular components have a reduced workload, contradicting the proposal of integral education, the axis of DCNEM / 2012¹1 Brasil. Conselho Nacional de Educação. Resolução nº 2, de 30 de janeiro de 2012. Dispõe sobre as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para o Ensino Médio. Diário Oficial da União 2012; 31 jan..

Another dimension to consider is that flexibilization also means cost reductions; initially because choosing a trajectory leads to the need for fewer teachers and can be a way of solving, albeit mistakenly, the chronic shortage of teachers for some subjects, particularly in the fields of exact sciences and nature sciences. As each education system can offer the formative trajectories it considers appropriate according to the structural and resource possibilities of the educational institutions or networks, this offer can be restricted to only one trajectory, among the least complex and, therefore, the ones that consume fewer human, material and financial resources; here is the cost-reducing characteristic. This also occurs by determining that the basic overall training has defined only its maximum, but not the minimum duration. Thus, education systems have the autonomy to define the duration of this training, which may be less than 1,800 hours, further away from the possibility of an integral education.

On the other hand, this perspective of cost reduction is contradicted by the proposal to expand the duration of high school, which should progressively reach 1,400 hours / year, i.e. 07 hours / day, to become full-time schools. In five years, starting in 2017, high schools should reach 1,000 hours throughout 200 school-days, which implies 5 hours of activities a day. Schools that start offering full education as of the date of implementation of the Law and meet the criteria established by MEC, will have financial support for ten years, after formalizing the Term of Commitment that spells out the actions to be taken and the goals to be achieved. This transfer of funds, calculated by the number of school registrations, although mandatory, will depend on the budget availability of MEC. Schools located in regions with a lower Human Development Index (HDI) and have lower results in the National High School Assessment Processes will have the priority for financial support. The possibility of such funding, however, is hindered by successive cuts in the education budget, notably under President Jair Bolsonaro's government, and by the financial-budget crisis the federated units are going through, which are largely responsible for the provision of high school education, which leads us to conclude that the logic of a cost-reducing curricular organization predominates. Thus, the curricular organization determined by the Law obeys the principle of flexibilization, with cost reductions, which contradicts the alleged expansion of duration, aiming at the implementation of high schools with full-time education.

Also, from the perspective of 'watering down' with cost reductions, the flexibilization, in terms of technical and vocational training, in an obvious recommencement of Decree 2,208/97, determines that the curriculum can be organized in modules with a credit system and specific terminality. This flexibilization opens the possibility, reincorporated by Law 13,415/2017, that agreements can be established with accredited educational institutions that offer technical and vocational training in person and at distance, so that competences and courses developed in other spaces can be validated.

In the specific case of competences, they may be certified as long as proven by practical demonstration, supervised work experiences or those acquired outside the school environment, which allows the recognition of implied knowledge. The new norms for technical and vocational training, therefore, largely meet the principle of flexibilization, which in this case implies deconstruction of the proposed school curriculum.

The flexibilization proposed by the Law also affects teachers, especially those with technical and vocational training, who will be able to teach contents related to their professional training or experience, provided that their notorious knowledge is attested by a specific title or teaching practice in educational units of the public, private networks or in corporations. In other words, flexibilization also means deprofessionalization, a perspective established by Laws 13,429/2017 and 13,467/2017, which regulate, respectively, the outsourcing of services and labor relations (new Consolidation of Labor Laws-CLT).

Tendencies and challenges

The High School reform, by disqualifying this level of education in the name of flexibilization, reinforces the thesis of inverse duality

Together with the disqualifying character of high school reform, the analysis of data on access to and success in education in recent years has shown a progressive drop in educational indicators, which show a reduction in educational opportunities, especially for the vulnerable segments of the young populations, and for young individuals in families working for a living. Alongside this reduction, in the opposite direction, but dialectically related to it, is the increase in the number of young individuals who do not work and also of those who neither study nor work.

According to PNAD data from 2017²2 Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios - PNAD. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE; 2017., the number of individuals between 15 and 29 years old who do not work, do not study and have no professional qualification has increased by 5.9% from 2016 to 2017, which is the equivalent of more than 619,000 people. In 2016 they were 10.5 million, a number that grew to 11.2 million in 2017, from a total of 48.5 million people in this age group.

Disaggregating the data by gender, skin color or ethnicity, the highest percentages are found among women, 28.7% versus 17.4% of men, and among the black or brown individuals, 25.9% versus 18.7% of whites.

As a result, OECD³3 Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômico (OCDE). Um olhar sobre a educação. Paris: OCDE; 2018. studies indicate that Brazil is one of the countries with the highest number of individuals without a high school diploma; more than half of the adults (52%) aged 25-64 did not reach this level of schooling.

Among school-aged individuals, although the literacy rate is 87.2%, the adjusted net attendance rate was 68.4%, indicating almost 2 million repeat students and 1.3 million out of school. The data show that high school has the highest repeat and dropout rates, indicating that young people distance themselves from the possibilities of access to education as a fundamental right.

This trend is reinforced by the reduction, in 2017, of 1.3 million school enrollments in basic education when compared to 2014 (2.6) and the age-grade distortion rate reaches 24.7% of enrollments in the final years of elementary school and 28.2% of enrollments in high school.

According to the same report, the proportion of male students with an age/grade gap is higher than the female in all school years. Regarding skin color / ethnicity, it has been observed that the highest proportions of white students are identified in the day care center (54.7%) and in the concomitant or subsequent vocational training (50.1%),representing more than 50% of the students in these stages; Blacks and Browns are the majority in the other stages of education, especially in youth and adult education (YAE), where they represent 72.3% of the students. These percentages may be higher, since the lack of information on skin color / ethnicity still reaches 23.0% in each of the basic education stages.

Especially in high school, in 2018, 7.7 million enrollments were registered, following the downward trend seen in recent years. In this period, the total number of high school enrollments decreased by 7.1%. Conversely, enrollment integrated with vocational training grew 24.9% last year, from 468,212 in 2014 to 584,564 enrollments in 2018⁴4 Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira (INEP). Sinopse estatística da educação básica. Brasília: INEP; 2018..

Regarding the location, the number of high school enrollments is concentrated (95.3%) in urban schools. Moreover, 96.1% of enrollments in the rural area are provided by the public network. The federal network is the one that proportionally has the largest number of enrollments located in the rural area.

The figures presented here allow some conclusions about extending the rights to education of the working class. Initially, it should be considered that the provision of high school education, integrated or not to ES, the most critical level in relation to inclusion, is predominantly for white, male and urban youths.

Next, studies have shown that the unemployment rate of the poorest young individuals who have between 11 and 14 years of study, which would correspond to at least incomplete high school, has not decreased with the expansion of schooling; on the contrary, it has increased, showing that the educational effort of this segment does not decrease its difficulties in obtaining employment. The poor young individuals, even those with schooling, who have the most difficulty in obtaining work⁵5 Ribeiro R, Neder H. Juventude(s): desocupação, pobreza e escolaridade. Nova Econ 2009; 19(31):475-506..

The hypothesis I have been working with in recent years, motivated by Zibas's study⁶6 Zibas DML. A reforma do Ensino Médio no Chile: vitrina para a América Latina? Cad Pesq 2002; 115:233-262. and my own investigations⁷7 Kuenzer AZ. Da dualidade assumida à dualidade negada: o discurso da flexibilização justifica a inclusão excludente. Educ Soc 2007; 28:1153-1178., is the inverse duality proposal that, until the early 1990s,showed the overall education high school for the bourgeoisie and the vocational school for the workers. And, considering the precarious conditions of the public high schools intended for those who work for a living, the overall education, previously reserved for the elite, when made available to workers, was trivialized and disqualified. That is, the bourgeoisie, when making the overall version available to workers, does so in an unqualified manner; and the overall high school education became the school for “the children of others”, while science and technology education became the choice of the children of the bourgeoisie, even in higher education. For these, the high school is just a necessary step to have access to the courses valued by the market, under the flexible accumulation system⁸8 Kuenzer AZ. O Ensino Médio no Plano Nacional de Educação 2011-2020. Educ Soc 2010; 112:851-874..

Therefore, the data presented here so far, show that the perspective is a reduction in the indicators of access and success in high school for the working class, together with the reduction of employment opportunities, justified by many as caused by the lack of schooling and the poor quality of public school education. As stated by the OECD, “the lower level of schooling tends to be associated with greater income inequality, less employment and lower wages”³3 Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômico (OCDE). Um olhar sobre a educação. Paris: OCDE; 2018..

The flexibilization of the high school curriculum proposal is the pedagogical expression of the flexibilization of the accumulation system

As I have previously stated in other articles⁹9 Kuenzer AZ. Trabalho e escola: a flexibilização do Ensino Médio no contexto da acumulação flexível. Educ Soc 2017; 38:331-354., the flexibilization of High School is one of the expressions of the pedagogical project of the flexible accumulation system, of which logic remains the unequal distribution of knowledge, but in a differentiated way. This system is based, among other characteristics, on the flexibility of work processes, labor markets, products and consumption patterns. This flexibilization is accompanied by a combination of productive integration, investment in capital- and management-intensive technology and precarious workforce consumption, exacerbating the uneven development, both across sectors and geographic regions.

As, by nature, this process promotes the undermining and enhancing of work, so that the capital can be confirmed as a comprehensive principle of synthesis, workers must also undergo a process of ontological reduction. That occurs with everything that cannot be completely encompassed by the capitalist logic: first it must be excluded, then reduced to the merely economic dimension, so that it can be included under another ontological statute, a process which occurs, not individually, but in the midst of social and productive relations throughout history⁹9 Kuenzer AZ. Trabalho e escola: a flexibilização do Ensino Médio no contexto da acumulação flexível. Educ Soc 2017; 38:331-354..

Or, as Harvey¹⁰10 Harvey D. Condição pós-moderna. São Paulo: Loyola; 1992. states, the condition for the existence of an accumulation system is the correspondence between the transformation of the production and reproduction conditions of the employees, so that the behaviors of all types of political-economic agents will maintain the system working; that is, the correspondence between the forms of disciplining and the needs of the productive system, related to the training of workers and leaders.

The flexible accumulation system, therefore, demands the development of new, flexible forms of subjectivity, for which, under the Gramscian conception, it constitutes a new pedagogy based on structural changes. This new pedagogy aims at new forms of disciplining, especially of the labor force, on which fall the results of the accelerated process of skill destruction and reconstruction, increasing the levels of structural unemployment, wage reductions and union demobilization¹⁰10 Harvey D. Condição pós-moderna. São Paulo: Loyola; 1992..

This pedagogy responds to the process that I called, in another text, 'exclusionary inclusion': from the market point of view, there is a process of exclusion of the workforce from restructured jobs, to include it precariously in other parts of the production chain. From the point of view of education, a contrary movement is established, dialectically integrated to the first: as a result of the “professed” public policies towards democratization, inclusion is increased in all points of the chain, but educational processes are made precarious, resulting in a mere opportunity of certification, which guarantees neither inclusion, nor permanence¹¹11 Kuenzer AZ. Exclusão includente e inclusão excludente: a nova forma de dualidade estrutural que objetiva as novas formas de relação entre educação e trabalho. In: Saviani D, Sanfelice JL, Lombardi JC. Capitalismo, Trabalho e Educação. 2ª ed. Campinas: Autores Associados; 2005. p. 77-96..

Thus, the discourse of flexible accumulation about education points to the need for the formation of flexible professionals, who follow the technological changes resulting from the dynamicity of contemporary scientific-technological production, rather than inflexible professionals, who repeat memorized procedures or those recreated from experience. To make this flexible training possible, one proposes to replace specialized training acquired in vocational and technological education courses bya more general training.

In the specific case of the current High School, the overall training, given the duration of only 1,800 hours to be complemented by studies in a specific area or by 'watered down' technical and vocational education, would in principle respond to this preparation for the flexible world, because a comprehensive or even specialized training, as it is considered rigid, would not be justified by the supposed obsolescence of knowledge.

Therefore, a general basis would be enough to ensure flexibility in relation to knowledge, accompanied by the development of basic cognitive skills, since learning throughout life is a central category in the flexible accumulation pedagogy. If the worker will move along his or her career path through countless occupations and opportunities for education at work, there is no reason to invest in basic or specialized vocational training, as the World Bank has proposed as a policy for poor countries since the 1990s¹²12 Kuenzer AZ. O ensino Médio no Contexto das Políticas Públicas de Educação no Brasil. Revista Brasileira de Educação 1997; 4:2077.; from the perspective of the flexible accumulation pedagogy, the integration between theory and practice will take place along the work trajectories, making education, both general and professional, secondary. Thus, the 'watered down' training proposals are justified.

What the discourse of flexible accumulation pedagogy does not reveal is that by destroying the links between qualification and work through the use of new technologies, which trivializes skills, making them very similar and sharing a common knowledge basis of industrial automation, alongside the toyotist strategy of defining production by demand, the labor market is now governed by the logic of flexible arrangements of differentiated skills⁷7 Kuenzer AZ. Da dualidade assumida à dualidade negada: o discurso da flexibilização justifica a inclusão excludente. Educ Soc 2007; 28:1153-1178..

Different from what occurred with taylorism / fordism, where skills were developed with a focus on previously defined and relatively stable occupations, the productive integration feeds on the flexible consumption of differentiated skills, which are articulated along the production chains. These combinations do not follow pre-established models, but are defined and redefined according to the contracting and subcontracting strategies that are mobilized to meet the production driven by market demand. These are combinations that sometimes include, and sometimes exclude workers with different qualifications, to constitute dynamic collective bodies of work, through a network that integrates different forms of subcontracting and temporary work and that, by combining different strategies for extracting added value, ensure the accomplishment of the mercantile logic.

If there is a combination between unequal and differentiated works along the production chain, there are also differentiated and unequal demands for worker qualification that can be quickly met by flexible learning strategies, which allows hiring to be defined based on a worker profile with subsidies of overall education and capacity to learn new processes, and not based on qualification⁷7 Kuenzer AZ. Da dualidade assumida à dualidade negada: o discurso da flexibilização justifica a inclusão excludente. Educ Soc 2007; 28:1153-1178..

Hence the “flexible” character of the workforce; prior qualification is less important than adaptability, which includes both previously developed, cognitive, practical or behavioral skills, as well as the capacity to learn and comply with the new, which presupposes disciplined subjectivities that adequately deal with the dynamicity, instability, and with fluidity.

The discourse about the need to increase the levels of knowledge and the capacity to work intellectually, when adequately analyzed based on the flexible accumulationlogic, shows its concrete character: the need to have skilled labor available for consumption in the production chains, with unequal and differentiated qualifications that, combined in cells, teams, or even lines, taking into account different forms of contracting, subcontracting and other precarious agreements, will ensure the desired levels of productivity through added-value extraction processes that will combine the relative and absolute dimensions.

This form of workforce consumption along the production chains increases the unequal distribution of knowledge, where for some, depending on where and for how long they are integrated into the production chains, the right to exercise intellectual work integrated with practical activities is reserved, based on an extensive and qualified schooling trajectory; the same is not true for most workers, who develop unsophisticated tacit knowledge in simple and unqualified work activities and are poorly qualified by rapid training processes, supported by new technologies and the principles of flexible learning.

In this context of unequal distribution, lies the new High School; unlike the proposal that was part of the DCEM / 2012¹1 Brasil. Conselho Nacional de Educação. Resolução nº 2, de 30 de janeiro de 2012. Dispõe sobre as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para o Ensino Médio. Diário Oficial da União 2012; 31 jan., the approved curricular organization, by making the trajectories more flexible, institutionalizes unequal and differentiated access to knowledge.

In brief, High School, in its current version, integrating the flexible accumulation pedagogy, aims at training workers with flexible subjectivities, through an overall educational base complemented by training itineraries by area of knowledge, including technical and vocational training. Vocational training is made available on a differentiated basis by class origin, so as to enable those who work for a living to exercise, and to naturally accept, the multiple tasks in the flexible market. Being multitasking, in this case, implies performing the work made available by the market, for which a quick training is enough, based on some subsidy of overall education, whether at the elementary, technical or higher education level.

For some, it will mean performing skilled and creative work; these will not be affected by the high school reform, because they have, considering their class origin, other spaces and trajectories of education other than high school in public schools. For most workers, however, multitasking will mean performing basic, repetitive and fragmented temporary jobs that do not require qualified training, but perhaps certificates or recognition of skills, which today's high school may supply.

This analysis is in agreement with the data presented in item 2.1; the downward trend in high school enrollment, together with the fact that dropout and failure rates predominantly affect children from the lower strata of the working class, as well as the black and brown population, reinforces the exclusionary characteristic of high school, which makes available to the market world a large number of unqualified workers, who will have precarious jobs as the alternative. The cycle of inclusionary exclusion is therefore closed at the end of the school, showing the reproductive feature of the high school reform in the flexible accumulation system.

The flexible curricular organization completes the precarious training scenario

The flexibilization of the curricular organization and methodology is one of the ways to meet the purpose of training professionals, of which workforce may be consumed in a more or less predatory way, along the production chains.

Its conception is part of the context of the so-called flexible learning, understood as the flexibilization of the learning trajectories, times and spaces, as proposed by the high school reform. In this case, the justification is the student's autonomy, as opposed to the inflexibility of traditional courses.

As stated in paragraph 9 of art. 17 of Res. 03/2018, which updates the 2012 DCNEM¹1 Brasil. Conselho Nacional de Educação. Resolução nº 2, de 30 de janeiro de 2012. Dispõe sobre as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para o Ensino Médio. Diário Oficial da União 2012; 31 jan., the high school curricular organization should offer adequate time and spaces of its own or in partnership with other organizations for studies and activities in order to better meet the heterogeneity and plurality of conditions, students' multiple interests and aspirations, with their age, social and cultural specificities, as well as their stage of development¹1 Brasil. Conselho Nacional de Educação. Resolução nº 2, de 30 de janeiro de 2012. Dispõe sobre as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para o Ensino Médio. Diário Oficial da União 2012; 31 jan..

From an epistemological point of view, flexible learning is guided by foundations that differentiate the new proposal from the theoretical-methodological assumptions included in DCNEM / 2012. In this document, among the central concepts, praxis and totality stand out, from the historical materialist conception that guided its development¹1 Brasil. Conselho Nacional de Educação. Resolução nº 2, de 30 de janeiro de 2012. Dispõe sobre as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para o Ensino Médio. Diário Oficial da União 2012; 31 jan.. Praxis is understood as a theoretical and practical activity that transforms nature and society; practice, insofar as theory, as a guide to action, guides human activity; theoretical, insofar as this action is a conscious one¹⁴14 Moraes MCMM, organizador. Iluminismo às Avessas: produção de conhecimento e políticas de formação docente. Rio de Janeiro: DP&A; 2003.

Based on this conception, the articulation between theory and practice is an epistemological presupposition; based on the understanding that the process of knowledge production results from the re-creation, that is, the reproduction of reality in thought, which occurs through human activity, a process through which reality acquires meaning for human beings, intellectual work and practical activity constitute a dialectical duality. Thus, if practice does not speak for itself, and the facts or phenomena have to be identified, analyzed, interpreted, since reality is not revealed through immediate observation, the intellectual work becomes essential in the act of knowing. It is through the movement of thought that focuses on the reality to be known, relating to the empirical dimension in practice, that meanings are constructed; it is through intellectual work that the appearance of phenomena is overcome, and relationships, connections, internal structures, forms of organization, associations between part and totality, the finalities, become known; as a result of this process, consciousness, social relations, and society itself can be transformed, as long as the necessary material conditions are provided. This process of building intellectually and ethically autonomous consciences aiming at creating a fairer society is one of the most cherished goals of Basic Education and, therefore, of High School.

In contrast, the flexible curriculum organization, centered on individuals and guided by their life projects, seeks to overcome the curricular conception proposed by DCNEM /2012, where the amplitude, depth and praxic dimension which the contents aiming at integral formation would be treated with, are replaced by a trajectory in which the overall formation is reduced and the itineraries lead, beyond the early choice, to the fragmentation in the relationship with knowledge.

Its foundations are no longer those of modern theories, nor do they contemplate the conception of totality; on the contrary, they fall within the framework of postmodern theories that support the concept of flexible learning. The production of knowledge is no longer understood as resulting from the association between theory and practice to result from intersubjective discourses, in this case, the students' interchange in networks, in practice communities, mediated by technologies.

From the viewpoint of these theories, knowledge is a historical impossibility, since it is impossible for human thought to apprehend reality, because it is marked by cultural diversity; thus, the interpretations are diverse, being true only in the cultural context that gave origin to it. What exist are interpretations, narratives linked to everyday practice, reducing knowledge to language, which gives rise to the concept that theory is built through the clash of intersubjective discourses at the level of the superstructure; that is, by the confrontation of discourses, and not by the confrontation between thought and materiality.

Thus, there is no truth, there is no possibility of knowing, which results in epistemological skepticism¹⁴14 Moraes MCMM, organizador. Iluminismo às Avessas: produção de conhecimento e políticas de formação docente. Rio de Janeiro: DP&A; 2003. It is important to highlight that there is no denial of reality but of the possibility of apprehending it, as there are no disinterested discourses, since they are produced from a given culture and manifest power relations.

The result is the superficialization of the educational process, reducing knowledge to narratives about daily activities, a phenomenon called “theory retreat” by Moraes¹⁴14 Moraes MCMM, organizador. Iluminismo às Avessas: produção de conhecimento e políticas de formação docente. Rio de Janeiro: DP&A; 2003; this precariousness of formation affect teachers' formation, which closes the circle of the weakening of the systematized educational processes: restricted access to the theory by little complex intellectual work.

On the other hand, the affirmation of knowledge as resulting from the confrontation of discourses, by not recognizing it as resulting from the relationship between theory and practice, between intellectual work and activity, undermines the conception of praxis, which leads to two dimensions that characterize postmodernism: presentism and pragmatism, which, not coincidentally, feed consumption and, therefore, support mercantile logic. If one cannot know reality, one cannot transform it either!

Regarding the theory retreat, it was stated in another text, that Law N. 13,415/2017 opens the possibility of replacing part of the training that would be provided at high schools by at-distance courses, modules or courses offered by other institutions, in a clear process of curricular flexibility that relativizes the systematized curricular organization, especially in the technical and vocational training. In this specific case, the theory retreat is so significant that the certification of skills proven by supervised professional practice is accepted, always remembering that one is talking about a young adolescent, and not about an adult and experienced worker; the tacit knowledge is certified⁷7 Kuenzer AZ. Da dualidade assumida à dualidade negada: o discurso da flexibilização justifica a inclusão excludente. Educ Soc 2007; 28:1153-1178..

The denial of praxis as a possibility of transformation nullifies the projects, possibilities, and historicity: what counts is the present. Historical experience is replaced by the experience of the moment; historical organizations and their accumulated experiences are replaced by activism, where the feeling of unprecedented voluntarist actions become the major reference of choices of political postures and positions¹⁵15 Debord G. A sociedade do espetáculo. São Paulo: eBooksBrasil; 2013..

History is understood as a specific form of discourse, the narrative form, which, according to a previously defined script, attributes a truth effect to historical facts and data, covering them with a rationality that does not exist in reality; therefore, History does not exist. Consequently, neither universalism nor the collective exists, since social phenomena cannot be explained by external references to them, as these references are crossed by particularistic, culturally diverse readings.

If there are no history, no values, no principles or foundations, and no future; there is only the present, which must be lived to its fullness. Individualism is reinforced, reducing society to interactions between individuals and social relations are reduced to the individual plane, of personal choices. Consequently, there are no social theories, for these are illusions that disguise particular interests; totality becomes an impossible methodological resource, since there is no way to establish causal relations between social phenomena. Totality is replaced by fragmentation.

The curricular organization proposed by the high school reform, therefore, due to the flexibility that results in its epistemological precariousness, integrates perfectly with the flexible accumulation system, through the new forms of disciplining that weaken the relationship with knowledge, reduce the relationship between theory and practice to pragmatism, kill the belief in the possibility of building a new society by endorsing presentism and replacing collective processes in social and productive life by individualism.

Perspectives

The analysis carried out in this manuscript points out the weight of the material dimensions – in this case, the flexible accumulation system, in the re-articulation of the alliances that allow its increasing development; it constitutes a new hegemonic bloc, which, inexorably and without effective resistance, processes the adjustment in favor of capital: the reform of social security, the adjustment of public spending that penalizes education and health, in addition to other investments, the reform of the CLT, the approval of the bill regulating indiscriminate outsourcing, and, in the area of education, the High School adjustment.

However, in the midst of contradictions, a small gap opens in art. 7 of Res.03/2018/CNE/CEB, in the 1^st and 2^nd paragraphs, which allow alternative curricular organizations by schools, in the exercise of their autonomy:

The organization of interdisciplinary projects and other forms of curricular organization that includes the student in social practice using scientific and methodological knowledge for an adequate reading of reality, followed by the collective practice of building understandings and solutions, based on the praxis category, can be an alternative for the integral formation of young individuals who see the possibilities of emancipation within the counter hegemonic movement.

However, one cannot ignore that the analysis shows the harsh reality expressed by the weight of materiality and the weakening of the classic superstructural instances that have been historically responsible for the formation in the counter-hegemonic plan: schools, parties, unions. And it points to the need to rebuild the old and build the new formative and organizational spaces in search of overcoming the state of perplexity and near paralysis that plagues the counter-hegemonic movements at this historical moment we are living, under the government of Jair Bolsonaro, at the risk of keeping the resistance anesthetized and giving up the possibilities of transformation.

References

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