Pension and high school reforms: the evil twins

The proposed pension reform, submitted this week by the government to the National Congress, is a clear indication that education, especially secondary education, has ceased to be a priority for President Michel Temer. It is a socially exclusionary reform that signals to everyone that education has once again become an exclusive right of the wealthy. For the poorest, the alternative is increasingly early entry into the workforce.

The most serious issue is that this signal comes at a time when the country is lagging behind in the PISA results, the main assessment of basic education in the world, and when the Chamber of Deputies is approving an authoritarian high school reform, disregarding 12 million contributions from society to the National Common Curriculum Base. The two reforms, pension and high school, share similarities not only in the speed of their processing, but also in the absolute lack of dialogue with society.

The new pension system proposed by the PMDB government stipulates that to receive a full pension, Brazilians must contribute for 49 years. Furthermore, it establishes a minimum retirement age of 65 for both men and women. A proportional pension of 76% requires a minimum contribution period of 25 years.

In practice, the reform, which is much more severe for women, dictates that to receive 100% of their retirement benefits at the minimum age, Brazilians will have to start working at 16, the age at which they should be entering high school. This fact, coupled with the dismantling carried out by Mendonça Filho's administration in strategic programs of the Ministry of Education such as Pronatec, with the cancellation of an agreement with the Sistema S that foresaw 1,4 million new places in the second half of this year, will result in the emptying of high school education for the poorest.

With the economic crisis, wage stagnation, and the difficulty of retirement imposed by the pension reform, the real trend is for the poorest to start working earlier and earlier as a way to supplement family income. The legacy this government will leave for Brazilian secondary education will be a significant increase in dropout rates among the poorest from this level of education and, consequently, from higher education.

We must also consider that the authoritarian reform of secondary education, which is being rushed through the National Congress, completely cripples night school. This episode further jeopardizes the future of young people who need, and will need even more after the pension reform, to work during the day and study in the afternoon.

We are talking about the end of opportunities for thousands of Brazilians who learned to walk with their heads held high during the Lula and Dilma governments. It is the frustration of the dreams of the children of construction workers and domestic servants who "dared" to become doctors, encouraged by social policies such as ProUni and affirmative action quotas.

The pension reform proposed by the Temer government envisions a country where higher education becomes an exclusive right for the wealthiest. This objective of resuming higher education geared towards elites was already blatantly demonstrated by this government with the end of the Science Without Borders program and, now, with the freezing of the expansion of places in the federal network for the next two years and the changes to the ENEM (National High School Exam). What's coming is regression, with greater income concentration, the poorest paying for the retirement of the middle class, and the return of youth labor.

The perverse logic of the pension reform proposed by the illegitimate government becomes clear when we see that the children of the wealthiest are able to remain in their parents' homes, within the education system (master's and doctoral degrees), until they are 40 years old. Only then do they enter the job market.

Upon entering the job market at age 40, with a complete academic education, the children of the wealthiest still enjoy the possibility of receiving a proportional pension at age 65. The contradiction lies in the fact that this proportional pension will be higher than the full pension of workers who started working at age 16, under unfavorable conditions and with lower pay throughout their lives.

As presented, the pension reform indirectly and indirectly impacts a reform of secondary education, which will result in the return of child labor. The two reforms are Siamese twins in a project to elitize society. On the other hand, the setbacks are so numerous that they have the power, however contradictory it may seem, to unite resistance movements.

If the authoritarian high school reform, which proposes educational apartheid, mobilized thousands of students, teachers, and educators, the pension reform will mobilize labor unions and workers. This social cauldron has the potential to deepen the meltdown of the elite government, which is increasingly cowering within the offices of Brasília and the walls of the Planalto Palace.