Precarity and coloniality in the Brazilian education field: an analysis of the Law no. 13,415/17 and the final years of the Primary School in the National Common Curricular Base

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the current proposal for Brazilian Primary and Secondary School, particularly after the implementation of the Law no. 13,415/17, which modified Brazilian’s national education guidelines and bases, regulated by the Law no. 9,394/96. Specifically, I propose to reflect upon this new law, how it shapes a new National Education Project and its impact on ‘historically oppressed groups’, such as Afrodescendant and Indigenous populations. I will also point out how these groups are framed by the new contents (and knowledge) of the Base Nacional Comum Curricular [National Common Curricular Base] (BNCC), focusing in the final years of the Primary School (5th to 9th grade). Against this backdrop, I will explore, within the contemporary Brazilian education field, the compatibility of ‘precarity’ (Butler, 2009) and coloniality in relation to institutional racism and Eurocentric (Western) thought. Mainly based on the ‘Ecology of Knowledges’ by Santos (2007), I propose the necessity to work on both: on the recognition of the bases of these groups, that needs a critical and regulated education about their histories, contents and knowledge, which should be explicitly exposed in a transversal way in the BNCC; and the deconstruction of the vision of education focused only on the market logic, rather than an education for citizenship, equity, and diversity. Finally, my methodology has a qualitative approach, based on secondary documentation sources (bibliographic research), passing through diverse research specifications (descriptive, exploratory and explanatory analysis).