Let the market fight for it!!

Public education emerged in modern Western societies a few decades after the beginning of the industrialization process. It was in the 19th century that the state became obligated to spend its resources on education, in the same way as providing potable water and basic sanitation. These processes occurred concurrently over time. The "market" recognized the harm to production caused by sick proletarians without treated water or an urban sanitation system. The bourgeoisie, especially the English bourgeoisie, then began to defend, as a "civilizing milestone," that the state should pay for all the social transformation produced by these changes which – ultimately – benefited production.

Public education follows the same path. With a huge need for labor and a small supply, the bourgeoisie would have two options: one would be to accept the "yoke" of the market and increase the value of labor to encourage people to become qualified. As we know, "accepting the constraints of the market" is something that only the poor and marginalized need to do. The bourgeoisie bends the State to what it deems necessary and important. The second way to solve the problem of the lack of qualified labor was to provide education. Again, the bourgeoisie passes these costs on to the State. It was not enough for education to be merely public (paid for by the State); it also needed to be universal. If public education were not universal, the State's efforts would be increasing the value of labor. And this, we know, is unacceptable.

Imagine, in the mid-19th century, hundreds of thousands of people leaving rural life, impoverished and crowding into cities. Without literacy and with all their knowledge organized towards rural production, the city was a desert of hope and an almost certain tomb. If, in this scenario, we had public education, a lucky few would become usable proletarians for bourgeois production. The problem is that their number would be small compared to the needs. And as we know, according to the law of supply and demand, few proletarians and the bourgeoisie would need to raise the wages paid to secure their work. 

Hence the "civilizing" pressure for education to be "universal," or as comprehensive as possible. This is not a moral recognition of the State's functions, or a human perception of the need for culture and education to increase social well-being. It is purely about maximizing profits, generating a skilled and abundant workforce, with the costs paid by the working class itself.

In Brazil, although the 1824 Constitution already provided for universal public education, it only emerged with the industrialization process. It is no coincidence that the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Education were created together under Vargas. In states with a greater need for labor for industry, education developed more rapidly. However, in an unequal country like ours, until the end of the 20th century we had immense areas completely excluded from formal public education.

It was during the FHC (Fernando Henrique Cardoso) administration that the first major expansion of public education took place. In the neoliberal context, at the beginning of globalization, it was once again the bourgeoisie demanding that the State pay for the training of the workforce they imagined they would quickly need. In a world of decentralized production, even the "deepest Brazil" was potentially a target for globalization investments and needed to be able to offer cheap and abundant labor.

Here, in my understanding, arises one of the greatest ills of Brazilian education: the so-called "education for the market." The concept disguises itself in various layers of Louis Vuitton (or Luís Vítor, as a friend used to say) to hide its true purpose. First, there is talk of "vocational education" to allow for a "better life" for Brazilians. Then, still in the 20th century, there is talk of technical-scientific education. A little later, this "education for the market" also encompasses "entrepreneurship," "financial education," "education for the world of computing," and now, the "new digital education." All these names mean exactly what they meant in the 19th century: society paying the costs of producing labor for capitalism on a scale necessary to offer qualified labor without forcing the price of that same labor to rise.

The problem is that while capitalism believes it's possible to generate infinite value on a finite planet, the same cannot be said of time for human beings. There simply isn't enough time, from ages 7 to 18 (the age at which the market deems bodies too old to be generating value to be appropriated), to teach everything the market demands as a curriculum for value creation and everything we demand as a curriculum for shaping human beings. Understanding Socrates and Plato, reading and admiring Miguel de Cervantes, retracing the thought of Lavoisier and Newton, and learning about the feats and monstrosities of Caesar, Bonaparte, and Hitler takes far too much time that could be used to teach database creation, PHP programming, or simply accepting the false assertion that merit determines social position in capitalism.

Faced with a lack of time, the market has ordered the removal of the entire humanistic curriculum, with public education focusing on "literacy" and "basic operations." Everything else is left to the market's ancillary educational institutions (television, church, army, etc.). "Education for the market" is the basic curricular matrix of neoliberalism and the logical center of the "high school reform." Art, music, theater, philosophy, history, literature... no longer matter to the market as public education, let that be clear. In private schools, there is an increasing emphasis on literature, body expression, sports, and novelties such as robotics, programming, and bioresearch. For the people, the market only wants them to read (functionally) and do basic math.

It's time to tell the market to fight for what it wants. This, besides freeing our students to become human beings, would also help increase the value of labor and stabilize the job market. We need to stop enriching this exploitative bourgeoisie. No one becomes a fascist without knowing the quadratic formula. But if you don't read Homer, Victor Hugo, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, or Carolina Maria de Jesus, that will certainly put you further from the point where empathy develops. Empathy, which is becoming the only human characteristic that cannot be replicated by artificial intelligence.

We must repeal this abomination that is the "new high school curriculum." We must remove neoliberalism from education. We must work towards a humane education, for human beings. Let the market fight it out.