The The New Middle Education System in Brazil and its impacts on the citizenship of public school students: The Habermasian perspective

The Habermasian Perspective

Abstract

This work analyzes the potential impacts of the so-called New Secondary Education on student training, especially in preparation for exercising active citizenship. Established with Law 13,415, of February 16, 2017, the secondary education reform intends three fundamental changes: the first, to promote the progressive increase in the minimum school workload until reaching full-time. The second change, creating “training itineraries”, with new subjects, relatively reducing the load of mandatory content, and allowing students to orient their school trajectory towards their interests, inclinations and personal needs. The third, encourage and expand the offer of technical education. Our evaluation about the reform will be anchored in Habermas' understanding that qualified participation in public debate requires individuals to develop and use expressive skills recognized (legitimized) by the interpretive community. Formal education, from this perspective, by disseminating the bases for the rational arguments and legitimate means for expressing one's will, aims to enable and qualify the participation of individuals in the public debate. The partial conclusions resulting from this approach are based on an empirical study carried out at the Reverend Hugh Clarence Tucker State School, in Rio de Janeiro. They indicate that, although recent and incomplete, changes in secondary education have the potential to worsen social differences between poor and rich students since elite private schools are better materially prepared to act in this ambient. Furthermore, they have better paid professionals who are charged with measurable results by school administration and families.