Gabriel Mario Rodrigues – Chairman of the Advisory Board at Kroton Educacional and Chairman of the Board of Directors of ABMES (The Association of Owners of Private Higher Education Institutions)
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by renewing your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12: 2)
The previous week, I addressed, in the article “Education as a goal of sustainable development”, the “Educate for the new” platform. I am glad when the readers interact, because this way the material fulfills part of its objective, that is the reflection and the debate on the subjects we are dealing with.
The criticisms are always valid and allow us other approaches of the subjects discussed. I received an e-mail saying that I had loved the promotional piece of “SAS Plataform”, published in Folha on the National Common Curricular Base. To the reader, the experience was nothing like that.
“The reform proposals are complex and have pros and cons, and if you look inward you need excellent experts and even more trained teachers to organize, plan and implement this new mindset, this new conception, this new content, this new vision of education”.
Since the subject is extensive I will address it in this article and next week’s. In principle, there are four pillars that relate to the core of the Base proposal: the definition of general contents and goals; socio-emotional skills integrating learning; the new teacher and the promotion of the protagonism of the student; besides the use of new technologies.
The National Curricular Common Base for Primary and Secondary Education (BNCC) was approved by the National Education Council (CNE) in December 2017 after two years of discussion and analysis. The government announced it, but the guidelines were formulated jointly by hundreds of teachers, in addition to expressive participation from various sectors. The ABMES was also part of this process, bringing together specialists to study the subject and mobilizing the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) associated with sending suggestions. The final document was sent to the Ministry of Education, which received more than 12 million contributions.
The first version of BNCC was formulated in 2014, from the meeting of 116 specialist teachers. In 2015, the document was put into public consultation. More than 9,000 recommendations from teachers, education managers and students resulted in the third version, summarized in the document released in April 2017. The proposal then went to the CNE and, after being approved, went to the implementation stage, expected to be around two years. That is, in practice, the result would only begin to be seen in 2020 for kindergarten and elementary education I and II (1st to 9th grade).
As you can see, it takes time for the guidelines to reach schools. It takes a will to meet this challenge, especially politics. The new always amazes and sometimes terrifies.
In addition, financial and technical support from the Federal Government is required for implementation in schools, transforming the BNCC into state and municipal curricula. The superintendent of the Center for Studies and Research in Education, Culture and Community Action (Cenpec), Anna Helena Altenfelder, warns of one more important points: “we can not imagine that the base transformed into a curriculum will enable improvement in the quality of teaching without adequate conditions for the teacher, which implies not only the salary, which is fundamental, but concrete conditions of infrastructure and training. ”
Despite contrary opinions, the BNCC presents itself as an excellent innovative proposal in the intricacies of national education. So far, basic education has only met the requirements of preparing the student for higher education. The market / employability was on another plane. It was, say, the University’s task, but without unanimity.
From the proposal, comes the question “how to make everything happen? “Yes, because so far it seems that the government has given a Trojan Horse gift to private schools as well as to public ones. That is, who will pay this bill, the reform / revolution with millions perspectives?
Apparently an already digested subject, the BNCC will still need Herculean efforts to effectively be applied, from normative vigor, with various actors taking their positions with full dedication. Just like holding hands in a rocky agreement that starts with school management, with coordinators, course directors in addition to teachers and support from families, without losing sight of the fact that:
1. BNCC is a complex subject and for that reason it is fundamental to read and understand the approved normative text without being adrift when there is a whole multidisciplinarity to be known and exercised;
2. teachers need to have mastery in the treatment of socio-emotional competencies; with many additional and complementary readings, also because there already exists in the market a very rich bibliography;
3. they will also need to reinvent themselves as teachers, with new techniques and approaches, as well as the need to better qualify with courses as well as post graduation;
4. To master technologies and thus to enhance teaching, since learners often have much more mastery due to constant and continuous traffic through the internet and social networks.
Expected by many and discussed exhaustively in the relevant forums, without a unanimous vote, it is now time to await the BNCC of the Secondary School, sent to the CNE on May 3, to see in which ocean it empties this river.
More than appeasing the anguish of seeing it, on the part of those who joined the working groups of the slow and tiresome process, the secretaries of education of the states, the managers, coordinators and directors of educational units, pedagogues, teachers, finally , of all the operators of education in these cycles, the great expectation will be given even at the doors of the universities because the promises are many, accompanied by several questions.
The concern is to know and prove that there really was change for the better and that, therefore, the intellectual quality of the young people who will go through the new formative stages in fact was ready for the challenge of the second stage and finally for the third stage, the university.
Infrastructure and teacher training are still barriers that some schools face in order to introduce technology in their daily lives, with tools such as videotapes, diagnostic assessments, online tasks, access applications for teachers and students. In short, an available portal that concentrates content and relevant information.
The latest school census shows the tragedy of bleeding in the body with the reduction in the number of young people who seek the teaching profession in our universities. To continue this way we will have the worsening of the intellectual anemia that characterizes us and in a competitive world this means the anemia of the economy, of the culture and of the social life. Here comes the function, responsibility and desideratum of BNCC.
Let us hope that once and for all we will be able to solve our educational deficiencies, which have been here for a long time, in disfavor of the globalized current that has only brought us discomfort, also because we were saving one and the other, cyclically, of the errors, inaccuracies and uncertainties of the proposals.
