Usos e gênese do discurso mudancista no campo educacional brasileiro

Abstract

The objective of this study is to grasp the ways in which certain discourses emphasize the transformative potential of education, and also explain the genesis of pedagogic discourse that refers to changes. One of the sources for this research was a collection of published works found in specialized literature on the history of Brazilian education. Those, either implicitly or explicitly, give emphasis to the bias towards changes in educational discourse. Also, the articles published in Education and Society (the No 1, 1978, at No 57, 1996) and in the Journal of ANDE (the No 1, 1981, at No 21, 1995) were used as sources for this work. It is possible to notice that the belief in the transformative potential of education is related to the emerging modern conception of man, influenced mainly by an "optimistic" way of appropriating the Marxist approach; likewise, that belief is part of a "pedagogic thinking style", shown by intellectuals in education, aimed to emphasize the dynamics of the educational field in relation to social structure. Such style of thinking was already present in the first republic and was refreshed in the period of democratization of the country in the 1980s.