“A invenção do possível”: o Programa Mais Cultura nas Escolas (PMCE) e uma reflexão sobre políticas, saberes e práticas para a curricularização da cultura na educação básica brasileira

Abstract

This thesis examines the Mais Cultura nas Escolas Program (PMCE) as its object of study. The program was developed through coordinated efforts between Brazil’s Ministry of Education (MEC) and the Ministry of Culture (MinC) from 2012 to 2015. The PMCE aimed to establish dialogical bridges between schools and communities by fostering connections between educational institutions and local cultural and artistic experiences. It also sought to recognize the school as a key institution for promoting and disseminating Brazilian culture in its multiple repertoires of knowledge. Despite the relevance of the program’s design—centered on understanding the school as a locus for the circulation, recognition, and promotion of Brazil’s sociocultural diversity—the PMCE had a limited scope of action. This limitation was mainly due to the fact that the proposed dialogue between culture and school remained on the margins of the school’s official content, which is structured around the curriculum. As a result, the pedagogical potential of the PMCE was reduced to a one-off initiative within MEC’s broader full-time education policy. Thus, this research aims to understand how the program, through the concepts outlined in its proposal, can inspire new curricular arrangements that unfold into formative experiences grounded in plural cultural practices and knowledge, thereby contributing to a more democratic education. In this sense, the central objective of the study was to analyze the PMCE as a strategy to foster discussion on the curricularization of culture of Brazilian Basic Education. To this end, the study adopts the Policy Cycle Approach (PCA) as its theoretical and methodological framework. This approach recognizes that the analytical trajectory of a public policy traverses various interconnected contexts, each of which confers different meanings to the policy (Bowe & Ball, 1992; Ball, 1994, 2009). Among these contexts, the study placed particular emphasis on the Context of Practice, by investigating how the PMCE was recontextualized by the Viola de Bolso Culture Point and two municipal public schools located in the city of Eunápolis, in the far south of Bahia. The aim of this analysis was to trace the path from the program’s proposal to its implementation in a specific context. The research method grounded in PCA was interwoven with various procedures, techniques, and approaches. We employed Document Analysis, Case Study, and ethnographically inspired research as methodological tools to better understand the object under investigation. Epistemologically, the thesis draws theoretical inspiration from the works of French historian and anthropologist Michel de Certeau (1982, 2012, 2013, 2014). His reflections provided a foundation for dialogue with other scholars and fields of knowledge that critically examine the relationships among culture, school, curriculum, and, consequently, the development of public policies that directly impact how the research subject is perceived. As a result of the investigation, we found that, although the PMCE was a one-time initiative carried out in a single edition, its proposal points to possible avenues for discussing the curricularization of culture into basic education. This integration is understood as a systemic political, cultural, and curricular process in which cultures—in their anthropological dimension—are mobilized through a plurality of meanings, expressions, and interpretations that can permeate and structure school content, practices, and educational experiences. Such an approach contributes to the comprehensive development of students on more democratic grounds. To this end, we argue that intersectoral collaboration between culture and education requires the institutional inclusion of the cultural sector in Brazil in the political processes of discussing and formulating curricular policies.