A escolarização doméstica em arena de disputas: conservadorismos religiosos e reconfigurações da Educação no Brasil contemporâneo

Abstract

This thesis analyzes homeschooling in contemporary Brazil as an arena of educational disputes, investigating how its defense is articulated with religious conservatism and with the reconfigurations of the role of public schooling. It adopts a Foucauldian perspective, understanding Education as a field permeated by power/knowledge relations, in which different actors dispute the definition of legitimate teaching, the values that should guide children’s formation, and the roles of the State and the family in this process. Methodologically, the research focuses on two central arenas of analysis: the political-governmental arena, centered on the actions and discourses of the government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022), particularly regarding attempts to regulate homeschooling, and the legislative arena, emphasizing public hearings related to Bill No. 1338/2022, understood as spaces of production, regulation, and dispute of discourses within the educational field. The analysis shows that contemporary homeschooling does not present itself merely as a pedagogical alternative, but rather as part of a broader project marked by familist, religious, and anti-pluralist values, which challenge the historical principles of public, secular, and democratic education. It also reveals that the defense of homeschooling is associated with the delegitimization of institutional pedagogical knowledge and with the privatization of educational responsibilities. It is concluded that the debate on homeschooling goes beyond technical or methodological dimensions, being embedded in broader disputes concerning democracy, social rights, and the production of subjectivities, reaffirming the school as a fundamental space for protection, socialization, and the guarantee of the right to education.