Perspectiva (Feb 2021)

Education in Brazil between 1930 and 1985: prioritizing quantity over quality in educational expansion

  • Gustavo Cunha de Araujo

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-795X.2021.e70567
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 39, no. 3

Abstract

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In the history of research on Brazilian education, several studies address the expansion of elementary education over the years in the country, in addition to the historical pedagogical context that permeated this process of expansion in the period between 1930 and 1985. The main objective of this article is to analyze the process of expansion of Brazilian Elementary Education, based on the Laws of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (GBNE) no. 4.024/61 and no. 5.692/71. The article concludes that the educational policy of the military dictatorship in Brazil after the 1960s was supported by these two laws, and that their main objective was to ensure the expansion of vacancies in elementary education, aiming at the minimum qualification for entry into the labour market, prioritising the quantity and not the quality of education. Public education materialized in the formation of human resources is considered a way to guarantee productivity; attending, on the one hand, to the demands of qualified labor for the capitalist market, and on the other hand, to the improvement of wages and the distribution of income to the elites.

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