Social educationalization and implications in the contemporary school

Abstract

This text has extracts of a research carried out within the Doctorate in Education which looked, from Foucauldian lenses, the articulation between education and social assistance, apprehending the implications that such articulation produces in the contemporary school. For this purpose, it was selected, firstly, a set of documents that legislate on Policies for Social Assistance in our country, and some assistance projects developed in Brazilian schools. Subsequently, semistructured interviews with directors of municipal schools located in the metropolitan area of Porto Alegre were conducted in order to analyze the effects that Social Assistance policies produce in the contemporary school. From the analysis undertaken, it was possible to realize that we live, in contemporary Brazil, a phenomenon we can call “social educationalization”, which points to Education as an instance of solution for a variety of social problems. This phenomenon affects considerably the scholar institution, producing some (re)configurations in the school, which are: (i) the expansionary role of contemporary schooling, which refers to multidimensional functions that became to be assigned to this institution and end up producing a considerable expansion of the school responsibilities in the contemporary context; and (ii) the contemporary redefinition of school knowledge, where it was possible to see that the school knowledge has undergone significant changes, incorporating issues related to the ways how subjects are conducted and how they should conduct themselves. Thus, the broadening of the learning concept becomes critical to the effectiveness of the government of the self.

Keywords: social assistance, education, public school.