Education, teacher union and job market

[Les Schaffer <schaffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[ BOUNCE html format from Ivonaldo Leite <ivonaldo.leite@xxxxxxx> ]


Hi everyone,

I am doing a PhD Thesis about "education, teacher syndicalism and job
market in Brazil/Portugal", and I'd like to know if any comrade has
knowledge of this relation in another country, what are the its
details?

In Brazil, for example, in the initiation of the 1990s, many
initiatives affirmed that the country should to make a urgent reform
in the educative system. The employers showed their proposals
defending the conection between education and job market. An education
for total quality, competition and flexibility was the pressupposition
that oriented the employers' initiatives. In this context the
Brazilian govenment started an ample process of educative reform, who
has the following synthesis: PCNs (National Curriculum Orietations),
for Basic Teaching and Secundary Teaching; PROEP (Plane for Expansion
of the Professional Education), for Techinical Teaching; Institutional
Avaliation, for Higuer Teaching; ENEM (National Examination), for
Secondary Teaching. The PCNs have as aim to help teachers elaborate a
flexible curriculum; the end of the PROEP is to diversify the offer
from professional courses; the creation of a rank between the
universities is the desire of the Institutional Avaliation; the ENEM
has as purpouse to present a diagnostic of the Secondary Teaching, It
contributes also to change the criterions of acess to university. The
Brazilian teacher syndicalism assumed a critical position in front the
educative reform. The principal entity of the teachers (National
Confederation of Workers in Education - CNTE) affirmed, for instance,
that the reform has an immense influence of the employers and that its
only aim is to attend the job market's demands. About the
presupposition that orients the reform, the CNTE declared that It's
the human capital theory. According the teacher union, the Brazilian
educative reofrm doesn´t consider the several human dimensions and
reduces the education to an instrument to serve to the employer
interests. The evidences of this would be in concepts as education for
total quality, competition and flexibility. Therefore the reform would
be forgeting that the socialization process is a central dimension in
education. However this is just one part of the critique that teacher
syndicalism does, the global direction of the educative policy also is
object od its critiques. The CNTE when analyses the relation between
globalization , state and educative policy describes impacts of
privatization on Brazilian public education system. It attrubutes this
to the fact from Brazilian government to follow neoliberal
orientations. The reduction of budget for public schools, for example,
is an item that the entity cities to demonstrate the neoliberal
influence on Brazilian educative policy. The government denys the
reduction of budget for public school. It shows numbers that
contradict the CNTE's accusations, because the numbers exhibit a
growth of expenses in education. The CNTE's explication is that the
numbers include also money that the government grants to the private
teaching. The presence of the total quality concept in the Brazilian
education, for the teacher syndicalism, is the principal evidence of
the neoliberal influence on national public education system. Brazil
has a total quality, who started in 1990. By CNTE, It has the
following ends: The creation of a culture of collaboration between
workers and employers; the professional formation of flexible workers;
the conection between research and job market; the reduction state's
power; the introduction of private reasoning in the public
administration. The educative debate in Brazil in 1990s between the
govenment and teacher syndicalism is a polemic debate, mainly when is
examined the relation education-job market. The CNTE says that
educative reform is a neoliberal reform, and the government denys
this, remembering the past of the President Fernando Henrique Cardoso
as sociologist and theoretician of the theory of the dependency,
affirming still that nowadays he is a critic of the new international
order, declaring that the relations between the North and South maybe
result in a new dependency (It's, for example, in CARDOSO, Fernando
Henrique (1993), "New North/South relations in the context present: a
new dependency?". In CARNOY, Martin et. al. The New Global Economy in
the Information Age. University Park, PA: Penn Sate University Press)

Ivonaldo Leite
ivonaldo.leite@xxxxxxx