By Guilherme de Souza Santos Netto – OPINION
What has been happening in Paraná's education system in recent years is a remnant of the neoliberal economic policies of the 1990s in Brazil, which have been intensifying every year. Education experts such as Professor Dr. Demerval Saviani guide us on the logic of capital that influences education and criticize the transformation of schools into commodities.
This logic promotes the maintenance of the precarious state and favors private institutions, especially the large partnerships made by Governor Ratinho Júnior, together with Tom Educação, Apogeu, Rede Decidição and Salta.
With these partnerships, the administrative management of schools is transferred to private sector companies, promising "superior quality", that is, the state government discredits its own management to benefit "partner" private companies with double the normal investment to manage in its place.
Professor Dr. Luiz Carlos de Freita highlights in his work ''The corporate reform of education: New right, old ideas'' that the process of making the private sector responsible for public sector resources is the very characterization of a corporate reform that takes place in education. This leads the author to believe that the elite's objective is to destroy the public education system by converting it into a corporate organization inserted in a free market, thus commodifying education in its essence.
And how can this jeopardize quality education? The commercialization of education leads to a scenario that takes away education as a social right of the population, leading to a misinterpretation of what a school should actually be. Well, nothing more, nothing less than the work done by all professionals, or that should be done, of raising awareness, improving critical knowledge of the environment in which the individual is inserted, proposing interpretations of other worlds for the political world in which we live, creating citizens and not machines that collect general information about everything. The goal of school is not to inform but to teach.
As a teacher, I cannot help but remember the devaluation of teaching, which is a recurring issue in Brazil. Basic education professionals have been repeatedly frowned upon lately in the country, mainly because they say that there is a process of ideologization going on, something that is not happening. Teachers are not being paid well, they are not being respected in the classroom, the percentage of professionals with psychological disorders has increased considerably in the last 10 years, and the demand for undergraduate courses in higher education has fallen drastically.
We do not know what the next step towards the precariousness that our leaders are planning from now on will be, whether we will be replaced by artificial intelligence or whether they will simply sign a law that will no longer be mandatory for us to be in the classroom, something that if suggested will pave the way for the mass elitization of education. But one thing is certain: united teachers will never make education a waste of time. We are fighting for our education to be valued, social and accessible.
Guilherme de Souza Santos Netto is a History teacher in the state education system.
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