The role of parents in their children’s education is undeniable. Even though today, in Brazil, students are required to attend regular school. As well as supplementing formal education, it is up to parents to establish the criteria for choosing a school. But the majority still depend on public schools.

In light of this, I would like to focus on two educational programs underway by the Brazilian government. The first aims to standardize the content of the school curriculum in Brazilian schools, called the Common National Curriculum Base – BNCC. The second offers free training to teachers in the basic education network, known as Teacher’s University.

In the project to build a common curriculum base, what worries me most is the government’s intervention in an issue that was previously the responsibility of the school: the content to be taught. The project claims to receive thousands of suggestions as to the basic content for each subject, but to what extent will this participation guarantee the quality of teaching? Even more worrying: how can we ensure that this content is not ideologically coordinated with the political vision of a particular party?

In the second case, for teacher training through the Teacher’s University program, linked to the Ministry of Education, there are 210,000 places on offer in classroom and distance learning courses for teacher training. Impressively, the program offers only one pedagogical perspective for all the courses: the one based on Paulo Freire. It’s odd, to say the least, that teacher training is geared towards just one pedagogical proposal. Teachers should be familiar with various teaching and learning approaches. The registration platform for the program is even called the Freire Platform.

One can see how these educational programs are restricting education in both approaches: one determining the content and the other defining the teaching pedagogy to be adopted by teachers. The future result of this intransigence tends to perpetuate the critical situation facing education in the country.

If you are also concerned about this situation, send in your contribution and take part in the debate!