The National Literacy Policy and the production of a new generation: a field of dispute

Abstract

The article analyzes the literacy policy instituted by the Brazilian federal government, taking as reference the Common National Curriculum Base (BNCC), the National Literacy Policy (PNA) and the Time to Learn Program, seeking to understand how these texts are articulated aiming at the implementation of a neoliberal and conservative political project planning to build a specific type of child. The policy formulated through the Ministry of Education aims to improve literacy processes through cognitive science and evidence on how people learn how to read and to write. Using document analysis and thematic analysis, with the contribution of the policy cycle approach, the present study examines the documents and the online version of the Time to Learn Program, categorizing what they prescribe regarding reading, understanding and producing written texts, evidencing the assumptions of the policy and its strategies. Despite the purpose announced by the PNA to address the main causes of literacy deficiencies in the country, this research finds that the transmutation of evidence-based science into a discourse coated with unquestionable truth, subtracts the objective reality of Brazilian education. The deed of attributing to a method the salvation of a complex process, such as literacy, disregards social, economic and cultural contexts, which contributes to the production of a generation only functional to the current capitalist productive system, based on financialization, control and regulation, deregulation and precarious training and teaching work, which defies democracy and social inclusion.