The trap of the High School Reform for curricular homogenization and singularization of Youth

Abstract

Curricular reforms, presented as solutions to educational problems, mask their real impacts on youth formation, silencing their voices and marginalizing their experiences. On the intricate stage of Brazilian high school education, a discursive battle unfolds under the guise of modernity and transformation. These discourses, in their quest for hegemony, aim to reconfigure power relations and pedagogical practices but obscure the contradictions and real impacts of these reforms on youth formation. In contrast to this hegemonic vision, we propose a reflection on the production of high school curricula, unraveling the complex webs of power that intertwine curricular fabric and youth experiences. Adopting a post-structuralist and post-foundational stance, we question the universal truths and fixed structures that underpin the official narrative, recognizing the curriculum as a discursive mosaic in constant flux, permeated by disputes of meaning and power relations. Through this analytical lens, we understand youth not as mere passive recipients of the curriculum but as active agents in the construction of their own knowledge and identities. Curricular reforms, in their eagerness to homogenize knowledge, ignore the plurality of Brazilian youth, silencing their voices and suppressing their resistances. In opposition to this homogenizing logic, this study celebrates the diversity of youth as a source of richness and social transformation. Youth, in their fluidity and constant reconfiguration, reinvent curricula, weaving their own narratives and constructing knowledge that transcends the limits of school.