Focusing on the pedagogic project of elementary schools, this paper targets to verify the relationship between the legal decisions instituted by the State and the so called "instituting", known as the school own political position against the State decisions, which is reflected upon proposals and practices. It is a qualitative work that utilizes theoretical and empirical references that aims, initially, to understand the meaning of schools' pedagogic project in the educational policy context determined by LDB/96 and its complementary legislation, particularly the National Curriculum Directives for Basic Education, in order to identify the type of citizen that has been formed by the current policies and how the relation between these policies and the State that had defined them is. The next step is to verify, by using the results of a research made at municipal schools, how these organizations understand the relationship between State and education and how this relationship reflects upon schools' educational projects and their operational conditions. It can be noticed that schools assume new discourses and translate them into projects and propositions echoing "instituted" discourses, without understanding their determining context and thus blocking practices that could rescue their social role. All these things make evident how necessary it is for schools to take a political position facing social and capital interests, under penalty of becoming a mere market instrument.
State; Education policies; Pedagogic project; Citizenship