Alfabetização de jovens e adultos no contexto da hegemonia neoliberal: uma análise do Programa Brasil Alfabetizado e do Pacto pela Superação do Analfabetismo e Qualificação na Educação de Jovens e Adultos

Abstract

This research aims to understand the role and meaning assumed by youth and adult literacy in the Brazilian educational landscape, focusing on the question: what ideopolitical meaning has youth and adult literacy assumed within the context of the neoliberal educational project for the Brazilian working class? To this end, we analyze the ruptures and continuities that mark this field in the consolidation of productive restructuring and neoliberal hegemony in Brazilian social formation, based on bibliographic review and document analysis, guided by the assumptions of historical-dialectical materialism. These assumptions underpinned the construction of the categories of work as an educational principle, the purpose of education, and educational management, used in the interpretation of official documents. We observe the disputes that permeate public literacy policies, with particular emphasis on the Brazil Literate Program (PBA) and its recent inclusion in the National Pact for Overcoming Illiteracy and Improving the Education of Young People and Adults, which redefines educational policy for EJA (Youth and Adult Education) and expresses the continued subordination of youth and adult literacy to the guidelines of the neoliberal project in the educational field. We argue that the intensification of neoliberalism in Brazil has profoundly affected the education of the working class, lowering the educational perspective and restricting the possibilities for critical thinking. In this sense, we understand that the literacy policies for young people and adults currently in place in this millennium, especially the PBA in its different formulations, have progressively distanced themselves from an emancipatory conception of education and favored the advancement and consolidation of neoliberal ideology over the Brazilian working class.