The politics of curricular erasure: debates on race, gender, and sexuality in the Brazilian ‘common core’ curriculum

ABSTRACT

Through the critical feminist lens of intersectionality, this article examines how race, gender, and sexuality were contested through a process of curricular revision before the Base Nacional Comum Curricular, the new Brazilian ‘common core’ curriculum known as the BNCC, became federal law in 2017. Drawing on interviews with professors who wrote the BNCC curriculum and an analysis of the different published iterations of the curriculum, the article argues that curricular debates around race, gender, and sexuality in the BNCC were constitutive of, rather than simply a reflection of, broader ideological debates about difference and inequality in the contested history and future of Brazil. The curricular politics of the BNCC are thus a key political terrain for understanding the subsequent election in 2018 of ultra-right-wing President Bolsonaro, whose candidacy was predicated on anti-Blackness, misogyny, and homophobia in a conjunctural moment of steep economic decline, political upheaval, and increasing violence and fear.

KEYWORDS:

• Curriculum
• policy
• intersectionality
• gender
• sexuality
• race
• white supremacy
• homophobia
• religion
• right-wing movements
• Brazil

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. For a discussion of the development of the coalition Movimento pela Base, the role of the Lemann Foundation within the movement, and how and why the BNCC was included in the PNE, see (Tarlau & Moeller 2020).

2. Interview, MEC government official, 27 July 2016. Pseudonym. (Tarlau & Moeller 2020)

3. The codes included: afro-brasileir*; afrodescendente*; raça*; racial; raciais; racismo; negr*; gênero; sexualidade; orientação sexual; homophobia; identidade de gênero.

4. In the revisions, there were no significant changes regarding the learning objectives of indigenous culture across the different published documents.

5. Thank you to João Pedro Souto Maior for his careful research assistance in examining differences between the versions of the BNCC.

6. Quilombo dos Palmares was a maroon community of escaped enslaved people in the Northeast in the 17^th century until it was suppressed at the end of the century.

7. PMDB is the Partido Movimento Democrático Brasileiro, the Brazilian Democratic Movement, which is a centrist political party.

8. https://g1.globo.com/educacao/noticia/votacao-da-nova-base-nacional-comum-curricular-e-adiada-apos-pedido-de-vistas.ghtml, Accessed 21 June 2019.

9. http://movimentopelabase.org.br/acontece/bncc-homologada/