Culture, Neoliberalism and Education in Peru's Official Secondary School Textbooks

Abstract

This article is framed in the field of study of school texts from the approach of critical analysis of discourse ACD (Atienza 2007, 2011; Achugar 2011; Oteíza 2009; Pinto 2011; Soler 2008; among others.), with a qualitative - interpretative methodology. In this sense, the school texts of the period of government of Alan García Pérez (2008 - 2012) and Ollanta Humala Tasso (2012 - 2016) are analyzed with the aim of knowing what type of subjectivities the texts build around culture as an economic resource for the students involved. On the one hand, in the school texts of 2008 - 2012, it is shown that students are positioned as sellers of their culture to tourists and as consumers of culture, specifically, as customers. On the other hand, in the school texts of 2012 - 2016, students are positioned as subjects committed to the commodification of cultural diversity within the framework of a discourse on sustainable development. In both cases, subjects are constructed who must respond to the “needs” of the hegemonic culture, energize the global economy as sellers and customers of their culture. In this effort to construct a type of subject that responds to the demands of the global market and a neoliberal capitalist project, the discussion of social injustices, discrimination, conflicts and power struggles is made invisible and minimized, and the objective of forming critical and reflective students is left aside.

Keywords

• neoliberalism
• education
• school texts
• subjectivity
• culture
• tourism
• commodification