Entre a promessa da formação integral e a lógica do capital: a implementação da Reforma do Ensino Médio em Minas Gerais

Abstract

The Brazilian High School Reform, initiated with the enactment of Provisional Measure No. 746, of September 22, 2016, later converted into Law No. 13.415/2017, promoted one of the most significant changes in the curricular structure of Brazilian basic education since the promulgation of the National Education Guidelines and Framework Law (LDB), of 1996. Inserted within a context marked by the advancement of neoliberal policies and the growing influence of international organizations and business groups over public education, the reform was disseminated through discourses emphasizing youth protagonism, autonomy, entrepreneurship, and integral education. By resuming proposals that emphasize competencies and skills, this reform brings back to the debate historical issues related to the purposes of this level of education. In this context, this research aimed to analyze the implementation of the Brazilian High School Reform in the state of Minas Gerais, investigating how the educational regulations guiding its implementation contribute, or not, to overcoming the historical duality of Brazilian secondary education, characterized by the separation between propaedeutic education and technicalprofessional training, as well as to promoting students’ integral human formation. To achieve this objective, we conducted a theoretical study with a qualitative approach, developed through the articulation of bibliographic and documentary research, grounded in the principles of historicaldialectical materialism. National legislation, guidelines, and regulations concerning high school education from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century were analyzed, as well as state-level regulations, with emphasis on the Minas Gerais High School Reference Curriculum, in addition to scientific production addressing the implementation of the New High School in the state. The theoretical framework is based on the contributions of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Antonio Gramsci, in dialogue with contemporary authors who discuss the concepts of integral human formation, omnilateral formation, polytechnic education, and the unitary school, such as Gaudêncio Frigotto, Paolo Nosella, Mario Alighiero Manacorda, and Dermeval Saviani. From these perspectives, we seek to understand how categories historically linked to human emancipation are appropriated by educational policies and re-signified under neoliberal rationality. The results reveal a mismatch between the official discourse of the reform and the concrete conditions of its implementation. Although the regulations emphasize youth protagonism, autonomy, and life projects, such categories are appropriated under a market-oriented logic, with emphasis on early employability and individual responsibility, disregarding the social, economic, and structural conditions that shape the trajectories of public-school students. The formative pathways, presented as a strategy for curricular diversification and expansion of students’ choices, are strongly conditioned by the material conditions of schools, the availability of teachers, and administrative decisions within educational systems, which, in practice, limit the proclaimed freedom of choice. Based on these results, we conclude that the High School Reform, as implemented in Minas Gerais, does not overcome the historical educational duality but rather updates it under new forms. By subordinating school education to market demands and neoliberal rationality, the reform empties the meaning of education as a social right and limits the possibilities for an integral, critical, and emancipatory human formation.