São Paulo subject “Life Project” and the privatization of the creativity of secondary school students

Abstract

Over the past four decades, Latin America has been experiencing processes of neoliberal privatization of its educational systems, and its sciences and social movements discuss the impacts of these processes on the various inequalities that permeate Latin American countries. This article problematizes how the current National Common Curricular Base (BNCC), completed in 2018, and the current reform of secondary education in São Paulo, initiated in 2020 and still ongoing, authorize and standardize a neoliberal privatization of students' creativity. Results are presented on private groups – among foundations, institutions, corporations and universities, both national and, notably, from the Global North – advancing in the occupation of regulatory positions in education and the formation of Brazilian social subjectivities, impacting on the detriment of Brazilian sovereignty in the democratization of the country. As a methodology, an interpretation of the interests of private agents involved in the elaboration and approval of the BNCC and the reform of secondary education in São Paulo was used, with emphasis on the curriculum and teaching materials of the recently implemented subject “Life Project” (“Projeto de Vida”).