International Institutions, Public Education, and Student Insurgency in Contemporary Brazil

• Author: Mônica Dias Martins
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221109555
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X221109555

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 246, Vol. 49 No. 5, September 2022, 116–131

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X221109555

© 2022 Latin American Perspectives

116

International Institutions, Public Education, and Student

Insurgency in Contemporary Brazil

by

Mônica Dias Martins

Following the 2016 coup in Brazil, strategies for avoiding the state’s constitutional

duty to provide free quality public secular education intensified. The government’s educa-

tion policy has focused on serving the private sector by commodifying education and

training a workforce adapted to a job market subservient to the powers that control the

World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Education funding has been

frozen for 20 years, and neoliberal reforms to secondary education have been proposed. The

crux of this policy is a high school program that distinguishes between two types of educa-

tion, technical-vocational for the working classes and scientific-humanistic for the ruling

classes. The reforms have been met by protests culminating in a national strike in May

2019 that brought thousands of students and education workers into the streets to demand

a place at the table. The society is responding to the attempt to transform Brazil into an

experiment in neoliberal totalitarianism, and the struggle continues.

Após o golpe de 2016 no Brasil, intensificaram-se as estratégias para evitar o dever

constitucional do Estado de oferecer educação pública e laica de qualidade e gratuita. A

política educacional do governo tem se concentrado no atendimento ao setor privado,

mercantilizando a educação e formando uma força de trabalho adaptada a um mercado de

trabalho subserviente aos poderes que controlam o Banco Mundial e o Banco Interamericano

de Desenvolvimento. O financiamento da educação foi congelado por 20 anos, e foram

propostas reformas neoliberais para o ensino médio. O cerne dessa política é um programa

de ensino médio que distingue entre dois tipos de educação, técnico-profissional para a

classe trabalhadora e científico-humanístico para as classes dominantes. As reformas

foram recebidas por protestos que culminaram em uma greve nacional em maio de 2019,

que levou milhares de estudantes e trabalhadores de educação às ruas para exigir um lugar

à mesa. A sociedade está respondendo à tentativa de transformar o Brasil em uma experiên-

cia de totalitarismo neoliberal, e a luta continua.

Keywords: International institutions, Public education, Student insurgency, Brazil

In the days following the 2016 parliamentary-media-legal coup that removed

Dilma Rousseff from the presidency in Brazil, a series of education-related

measures was quickly and artfully implemented by authoritarian means. The

Mônica Dias Martins is a professor at the Universidade Estadual do Ceará, coordinator of the

Observatory of Nationalities, and editor of Tensões Mundiais and is a member of the CLACSO

Steering Committee. A preliminary version of this article was presented at the 2019 meeting of the

Latin American Studies Association in Boston and later published in Portuguese in Praxis

Educacional (16: 848–868). The author appreciates the comments from colleagues that helped her

improve the article. Heather Hayes is a translator in Quito, Ecuador.

1109555LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X221109555Martins/PUBLIC EDUCATION AND STUDENT INSURGENCY IN BRAZIL

research-article2022

Martins/PUBLIC EDUCATION AND STUDENT INSURGENCY IN BRAZIL 117

idea was to weaken the state's role and free it of its duty to provide free quality

public secular education, a duty enshrined in the 1988 Constitution and the

country’s legal guidelines for education. Michel Temer's illegitimate adminis-

tration (2016–2018) supported the Escola Sem Partido (Nonpartisan School)

program in Congress through Bill 193/2016 (which ended up being shelved in

November 2017). It also froze education funds for 20 years with the “end of the

world” Constitutional Amendment 95 of 2016 and an antidemocratic reform of

secondary education (Ordinary Law 13.415, February 17, 2017) and vetoed giv-

ing priority to the National Education Plan in the 2018 budget. These changes,

which had been pursued by their proponents since 2004, represented a counter-

reform of Brazilian education and severely affected the secondary schools.1

Who were the interested parties in this process? What was the origin of the

initiatives seeking to deny access to knowledge that could lead to economic

change, social equality, and democratic practices? What was it that led an

adviser to the Federal Senate, in the executive summary of Provisional Measure

746 (Brazil, 2016), to claim that the proposal for high school reform followed the

recommendations of the World Bank and was based on the ideas of the United

Nations consultant Jacques Delors (2016)? Reflecting on these issues and draw-

ing theoretical support from Antonio Gramsci (1916: 101–102) and Paulo Freire

(1967), I have analyzed the results of research adopting a critical perspective on

the strategies adopted over the past three decades by the World Bank2 and its

partner in Latin America, the Inter-American Development Bank.3 Scholars

who have dedicated themselves to understanding the role of these multilateral

public banks in public educational policies include Leher (1999), Haddad,

Tommasia, and Warde (2000), Pereira (2010), Galli (2011), Fonseca (20110, Sabbi

(2012), Farias (2014), and Freire (2018).

International cooperation is not disinterested but permeated by contradic-

tions on many levels (Martins, 2007; Martins and Galli, 2011). When analyzing

the interrelationships between nation-states and international organizations, it

is important to avoid oversimplification with regard to the fallacies of uncon-

ditional alignment and impartial negotiation. Complacency and/or complicity

of government officials and members of Congress (by whom loans must be

approved)4 allows for interference by multilateral institutions in decisions that

affect the country’s future and sustain a world system in which 1 percent enjoy

the wealth that is produced while 99 percent suffer harsh living and working

conditions. Another aspect that is just as important as the economic side is the

politically and ideologically tinged effort to subdue young people between the

ages of 15 and 18, who are generally seen as rebellious and seeking some sort

of utopia. This was proven in November 2015, when despite police repression

thousands of high school students occupied schools across Brazil to protest the

proposed reform of high school education. Since then, the scenario has gradu-

ally worsened. In early 2019, with the emergence of a far-right government

averse to democratic practices and institutions seeking to annihilate rights

enshrined in the constitution and promoting radical cuts to physically, socially,

and politically eliminate sections of the population, new actors and discourses

began to appear. The president and his team threatened to cut resources for

public education and promoted militarism as the foundation for a model of