A construção da relação público-privada na educação: um estudo em municípios catarinenses

Abstract

Structural changes in the capitalist mode of production have led to changes in the social sphere, especially in education. New ways of constructing educational policies value the public-private relationship as a presupposition of the materialization of state action. This doctoral dissertation focuses on the public-private relationship in education and examines the partnerships between the public and private sectors in education, in the municipalities of Santa Catarina state, Brazil. The term private is understood in the context of social organizations (third sector/non-state public) and private for-profit enterprises. The study’s general objective is to analyze the elements that support the construction of partnerships between public administration and the private sector in the educational field in such municipalities. It points out reasons that may guide the construction of educational policies, so as to, rather than naturalize the private/marketing ideal in public education, construct educational projects based on education as praxis. The methodological approach is qualitative, and documents and semi-structured interviews have enabled the construction of the empirical elements of the research. Historical dialectical materialism is the theoretical-conceptual basis of the analysis. The empirical field was based on an exploratory research aimed at identifying the municipalities of Santa Catarina state that have partnerships, after which three municipalities of the West Santa Catarina mesoregion were selected: Chapecó, Xanxerê and Lindóia do Sul. The dissertation is organized in political, educational and legal dimensions, based on which its chapters have been defined. Conclusions point out that the construction of public-private partnerships in the field of education, in the municipalities studied, is based on the interrelation of political, educational and legal aspects, which results from the nexus of the formative project of the private sector and the materialization of educational policies coming from the partners towards public education. Teachers and students are the main actors of the reforms. Thus, the state/capital context favors the implementation of educational policies that value the public-private relationship; the arguments in favor of a specific type of quality in education represent the hegemonic discourse of the allies of the state in the development of public education; the current legal framework legitimizes and institutionalizes partnerships. In other words, in the public-private relationship in the education of the municipalities studied, the elements of the partnerships form a cohesive unit, which brings together the historical moment of valorization of the market ideals, the funding state marked by governance, and the fragility of the educational quality that needs to be overcome by modern educational practices and conceptions constructed by subjects outside the school. Ultimately, what is at stake in the elements that contribute to the construction of the public-private relationship is the maintenance of the capitalist order and the reduction of the struggle between capital and labor. And this nullifies the possibility of building pedagogical projects whose purpose coincides with those of human education from the perspective of praxis.