The present study seeks to question the image of the privatization of Brazilian education, which is presented as a generalized and ongoing process. It argues that this privatization process is full of meanders and does not accept simple answers because it is established by forces that sometimes stimulate the growth of the public sector, sometimes that of the private sector and sometime that of both. To support this argument, it explores both the federal legislation on incentives to private institutions passed these last four decades and the statistics on students in the three levels of education. The author highlights the fact that the increase in the number of secondary public school students generates a new quality that demands a new curriculum. The paper concludes that the meandering character of such frontiers demonstrates, on the one hand, a crisis of hegemony with regard to the nature of the republican State and, on the other, the hampering of a type of quality that is missing in Brazilian education: a clear distinction between the public and private spheres in its institutional and curricular dimensions.
Brazilian education; Privatization; Public policies
