Political networks in Brazilian education: The case of the National Curricular Common Core

Abstract

The focus of this article is to show how philanthropy and the third sector disputed spaces in the policy of curricular centralization, via the National Curricular Common Core (BNCC), reinforcing the need for Brazil to invest in this policy to advance in the quality of education. We rely on Stephen Ball's studies on the new philanthropy and governance in the neoliberal imaginary, deepening the post-structural reading already pointed out by this author, through Laclau’s and Mouffe’s theory of discourse. As a theoretical-methodological path, we interpret the discursive disputes through political networks, with emphasis on the Lemann Foundation, the Movimento pela Base (Movement for the Common Core), the Colabora Movement, and the Todos pela Educação (All for Education), all chosen because they are considered the main agents of the mobilization in defense of the BNCC from 2017 to 2022. We argue that such political networks produce discourses that legitimize and subsidize the BNCC to be interpreted as a consensus toward the desired learning, reinforcing the policy of curricular centrality, associated with the defense of the need for a National Education System (SNE). We also emphasize the strength that these discourses assume the greater the transitivity of social actors between the public and private instances.