EDITORIAL

The fields of education and health have been compelled to dialogue with the underlying ideology and the practices of the global capitalist expansion, especially over the past two decades. This issue of Trabalho, Educação e Saúde seeks to bring this discussion to the field of health training and produce an outline of the path the process has assumed within recent social experiences.

The Articles section presents two texts that touch upon the matter. The article entitled "The notion of employability in the policies for professional training and professional education in Brazil in the 90's", by Maria Angélica Alberto, explores the different meanings of the term in documents produced by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Labor and Employment and the Ministry of Health. The author analyzes the restructuring of production and the subsequent increase in global structural unemployment rates as well as its consequences in the international (and national) division of labor. The text entitled "The World Health Organization: from controlling epidemics to struggling for hegemony", by Gustavo Matta, is based on an extensive bibliographical research and discusses the transformations in the organization and actions of the WHO, in order to legitimize the agency in the formulation of global public policies for health, to be hegemonic in the international health market and to make itself present at the context of the so-called Global Health arena of political, economic and cultural negotiation. In the Debate section, the subject is discussed in two texts. The text entitled The Globalization of Education: Neoliberalism and Social Democracy in Brazil and Venezuela, by Adriana de Melo, deals with conflicts, in the 1990's, between the resistance of organized civil society movements and the path followed by educational policies implemented in both countries based on the guidelines advocated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for Latin America and the Caribbean. Even though the author indicates improvements in the democratization of education at the time, she also points to the negative consequences of the process, which includes the perpetuation of the school structural dualism. Giovanni Alves, in the article entitled "Labor, body and subjectivity: toytism and forms of precarization in global capitalism", discusses the contemporary experience of the body concerning toyotism, defined by the author as the present organic ideology of the capitalist production system. Toytism causes a "mind-body compression" to take place, a process similar to the space-time compression observed by David Harvey. The mind-body compression would characterize, thus, a new way for the mind and the body to relate in the context of global flexible accumulation.

Professional training in health is a common and central theme in the journal and is also the subject of three articles in this issue of Trabalho, Educação e Saúde. Concerning higher education professional training, the article "The development of health professors: an analysis", by Nildo Batista, criticizes the precedence of "specific professional training" over "training for teaching", asserting that specific training is not enough for an individual to be able to teach. Still on higher education professional training in health, the article "Training in nursing: a closer look at the recent scientific production (2001-2005)", by Otilia Seiffert, analyses three major themes regarding the above-mentioned scientific production published in Brazilian journals: "pedagogical rationale", "education in nursing" and the "nursing schools' programs (curriculum)". Within the themes, the author reflects upon a few matters (such as interdisciplinary actions, reflexive education and the integration between education and practice) and their relation to recently promulgated public policies concerning health and education (such as the National Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Nursing Courses, of 2001). As to professional education in vocational secondary school programs, Ana Lúcia Abrahão da Silva, in her article entitled "Professional education and administration in health: theoretical and conceptual premises in training secondary school professionals", discusses the curriculum framework of the Professional Education Course in Health Services, offered by the Joaquim Venâncio Polytechnic Health School of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. In a dialogue with both the current structure of management of health services and the text of the Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação [Guidelines and Bases of Education Act], the author discusses the process through which students construct autonomy, which serves as a horizon for the decentralization, regionalization and, above all, democratization of health services.

In conclusion, as to the theoretical and philosophical premises of professional training, José Rodrigues reopens the political and pedagogical debate on polytechnic education in his article entitled "Still polytechnic education: the new decree on professional education and the permanence of the structural dualism". The author states that polytechnic education is still a contemporary notion opposite to the phenomenon of school structural dualism, an idea which most recently emerged, according to the author, in the decree on professional education presently in force (number 5.154/2004).

This issue also presents an interview with professor Emir Sader and three book overviews: the first written by José Sanfelice on História e memórias da educação no Brasil [History and memory of education in Brazil] volume III, sec. XX, edited by Maria Stephanou and Maria Helena Bastos; the second by José Airton Monteiro and Solange Monteiro on Trabalho, educação e luta de classes [Labor, education and class struggle], edited by Suzana Vasconcelos Jimenez and Jackline Rabelo; and the third by Valdemar da Silva and Giovane Ramos on De ferro e flexíveis: marcas do Estado empresário e da privatização na subjetividade operária [Made of iron and yet flexible: stains of the corporate State and privatization on the working class subjectivity], by Maria Cecília de Souza Minayo.

The Editors

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  31 Oct 2012
• Date of issue
  Sept 2005