Inovação curricular no ensino médio: das experiências exitosas às duvidosas propostas de mudança

It is consensus that high school, in Brazil, is the level of education whose debates are most controversial, being considered as a large knot of our educational system. This historical problem (ZOTTI, 2009) faces challenges in relation to the access and permanence of young people in high school – problems that go beyond the issue of learning. Issues such as the mismatch with the reality of the students, the need to enter the labor market, various social issues related to those who attend this stage of education, as well as the teacher devaluation, are issues that reinforce the discourse of "crisis in High School" perpetuated in the Brazilian educational field almost over a century. In that way, it is understood that the reflection on the quality of the current High School requires the consistent analysis of issues of access and permanence, and also of reaching the demands and needs of the young people who attend to it. It is estimated that the current policies of High School, in particular the Law N° 13.415/2017, which instituted the makeover of the High School, does not directly respond to the historical demands of this stage of teaching, or shed light on the successful teaching experiences that have already been carried out in the country, such as the Experimental Secondary Classes and Gymnasiums/Vocational Schools, which sought to answer the same questions – however, with other aspects and in a time lapse of more than fifty years. These experiences, closed by the dictatorial regime in the 1960s, carried out the proposal to promote an integral education, contributing to the formation of students in various dimensions, in a significant way and promoting the effective integration of content. It is understood that tests of renewal of the High School should be formulated from the reading and evaluation of the experiences and policies already developed, and these new initiatives should, rather than wear the "clothing of the new" without offering real solutions to the existing demands, present effective advances – not appearing as counter-reforms, in which there are setbacks through the already achieved, as was the Law of Reform of the High School. Lastly, we emphasize, the need for studies and debate of experiences referred to as an example of quality, because the continuity of policies depends on the systematic study, evaluation and reformulation of initiatives that have achieved successful results.