The influence of the Inter-American Development Bank in the training of basic education teachers in Brazil¹

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes the process of expansion of private organizations in the educational field, in the period from 2013 to 2021, through the materiality of the external loan signed between the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Manaus Municipal Government. The theoretical and methodological contributions of the historical and dialectical materialism guided the path of the documentary and bibliographic analysis, whose main sources are the documents from the external loan agreement between the IDB and the Municipality of Manaus, contracts made by the Municipal Department of Education with hegemonic private organizations, such as the Itaú Social Foundation, Telefônica Vivo Foundation, and La Caixa Banking Foundation that were inserted in the continuing education of teachers. It was observed a hegemonic movement in the educational field in which the social relations built by the capital are established, maintained, and reinforced by multiple domination mechanisms, managed by hegemonic private organizations in Gramscian sense, which were inserted in the continuing education of teachers. Therefore, it is stated that the implications of the public-private partnership system directly influence the educational policy for public education in Manaus, specifically continuing education, which brings in the core, mercantilist strategies shaped by subservience to financial capital, establishing its profitable ground in the educational field and integrating the process of commodification of continuing teacher training, which strongly threatens the process of democratization of public education.

Key-words:
Teacher training; Public-private partnership system in education; Hegemonic Private Organizations; Public Education

RESUMO

O presente estudo faz uma análise do processo de expansão das organizações privadas no campo educacional, no período de 2013 a 2021, mediante a materialidade do empréstimo externo firmado entre o Banco Interamericano de Desenvolvimento (BID) e a Prefeitura Municipal de Manaus. As contribuições teórico-metodológicas do materialismo histórico-dialético guiaram o percurso da análise documental e bibliográfica, cujas principais fontes são os documentos oriundos do acordo do empréstimo externo entre o BID e a Prefeitura Municipal de Manaus, contratos efetivados pela Secretaria Municipal de Educação com as organizações privadas hegemônicas, como a Fundação Itaú Social, Fundação Telefônica Vivo e Fundação Bancária La Caixa que se inseriram na formação continuada dos/das professores/as. Observou-se, um movimento hegemônico no campo educativo em que as relações sociais construídas pelo capital se estabelecem, mantêm-se e se reforçam por múltiplos mecanismos de dominação, administrados por organizações privadas hegemônicas na acepção gramsciana, que se inseriram na formação continuada dos/das professores/as. Diante disso, afirma-se que as implicações do sistema de parceria público-privada, influenciam diretamente na política educacional para a educação pública de Manaus, especificamente a formação continuada, que traz no bojo, estratégias mercantilistas moldadas pela subserviência ao capital financeiro, estabelecendo seu terreno lucrativo no âmbito educacional e integrando-se ao processo de mercadorização da formação continuada de professores, que ameaça fortemente o processo da democratização da educação pública.

Palavras-chave:
Formação de professores; Sistema de Parceria Público-Privada na Educação; Organizações Privadas Hegemônicas; Educação Pública

Introduction

The process of expansion of private organizations in the educational field is revealed in the context of the economic globalization, marked by the hegemony of political thought, which focuses on the neoliberal principle, plus the incorporation of science and technology to the productive forces. These forces are advocated by the process of competitiveness in the corporative world, in the face of the constant pressure from the economic sector to reform the State and redefine social, and educational policies. In this way, it is observed that the changes advocated in the redefinition of the Brazilian

public educational policy reflect the neoliberal ideology², since they express privatizing, and ideological strategies that make up the power relations and benefit in this process, attributed to the rhythm of the international financial capital³, that is, the merger of the banking capital with the industrial capital.

In this sense, this article allows us to reflect on the process of expansion of private organizations in the educational field, through the external loan signed between the IDB and Manaus Municipal Government to finance the actions of the Project for Expansion and Improvement of Education in the Public Network of Manaus (PROEMEM), whose period of execution and implementation corresponds to eight years (2013 to 2021), being the Municipal Department of Education (SEMED)/Manaus the executing agency of the project. In this direction, it expands the direct presence of hegemonic private organizations in the Gramscian sense, among which stand out:

a) in 2015, Itaú Social Foundation signed an agreement and implemented the Educational Tutoring Program (PTE) for in-service continuing education for teachers in probationary periods in early childhood education, and the early years of elementary school;

b) the Telefônica Vivo Foundation, through Cooperation Agreement No. 003/20177 (MANAUS, 2018), implemented in the year 2017, with the ProFuturo Aula Digital Project for elementary school students in Manaus municipal network. ProFuturo Aula Digital is a global initiative of the Telefônica Vivo Foundation, and La Caixa Banking Foundation, executed by the Vitória Amazônica Foundation (FVA). The project’s pillars are teacher training, and in-school follow-up, digital pedagogical content and technological equipment; teacher training for educational innovation: management and educational practices with the use of digital technologies, and Manaus is the first Brazilian capital to implement this project.

Thus, the actions of private organizations through the public-private partnership system are present in all the financing of PROEMEM’s actions. This concentration of power and control of the financing of PROEMEM’s actions in the hands of banks, foundations, companies, and institutions allows them to interfere in the educational policy of Manaus school system, with these institutions establishing their hegemonic role in education. In other words, the public school system of Manaus appears as a laboratory for the improvement of this type of technology, which, without mistake, is related to the linking of the teaching work to the monitoring and performance of the student. From then on, the strategies of hegemonic private organizations can be seen, specifically the IDB in the conduction of the public school system of Manaus, notably in the continuing education of basic education teachers.

From this perspective, the conception presented by multilateral financial agencies sounds as if these educational redefinitions were enough for man to achieve the appropriation of knowledge, and bring about changes in his social practice. This is a subject of strong ideological connotation, which, both in the past and currently, has deserved the understanding of its essence, not only to operate its critique but, before and above all, to understand it in its totality and content, which can only be grasped in its complexity through theoretical tools that make it possible interpret and explain this process in education.

The trajectory of the consolidation of Brazilian public education in the 20th and 21st centuries has been “determined by forces that sometimes encourage the growth of the public sector, sometimes of the private sector, sometimes of both” (CUNHA, 2007, p. 810) and is formed as a prolix, and opposing process. With this perspective, it is considered that the materialization of agreements, covenants, consultancies, etc., between the public sector and the (inter)national private sector in education, hides hegemonic interests of big capital in a disguised and camouflaged way to legitimize its projects and programs, such as, for example, the external loan agreement between the IDB and the Municipality of Manaus to finance the actions of PROEMEM.

It can be seen, therefore, that the presence of private organizations in the municipal public education, especially in the teacher training, presents a growing sophistication of pedagogical concepts, outlining new horizons for the municipal public school system and functioning as an organizational activity that in Manaus is effected in the basic education.

It was verified that the implications of the public-private partnership system in education, that is, the distorted functioning of the public-private partnership that commercializes education - considered in this article as the public-private partnership system in education -, which until then were inserted in basic education activities such as transportation, meals, and cleaning services, currently reach the final activity in education and are materialized in agreements, covenants, consultancies, educational technologies, and offers of their products that are commercialized between the public sector and private organizations in the public education, especially in the training of basic education teachers.

The historical framework of this article is defined from the specificities of the late twentieth century and is mainly due to neoliberal reforms for education that have been adopted from the 1990s until today. These reforms began with commitments made by the governments of different countries, and by international organizations at the World Conference on Education for All, held in Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990. From this movement, the education became a central theme of political and economic reforms, “strongly directed, both in the definition of their priorities and their strategies, by the guidelines of international funding organizations” (KRAWCZYK, 2012, p. 347).

In Latin America, as an example Brazil, especially in the municipality of Manaus/AM, the recipe is the same as in most countries, specifying the general objectives of decentralizing educational policies, improving the quality, equity, and efficiency of systems, giving greater autonomy and also charge greater responsibility to the school, investing more and better in the teacher training and connecting the school to the demands of the society. Thus, a hegemonic movement is observed in the educational field, since, in the capitalist-based society in which we live today, the hegemonic pedagogies correspond to the interests of the bourgeoisie - since it occupies the position of the dominant class - and to the dominated interests, being situated in the counter-hegemonic movement, that is, the counter-hegemonic pedagogies correspond to the interests of the labor movement, and of the set of dispossessed workers.

Thus, documents relating to the materialization of the expansion of hegemonic private organizations in the municipal education were consulted, in which information about the Itaú Social Foundation and Telefônica Vivo Foundation is presented. The choice of these private organizations has to do with their performance in the teacher education in the municipal network and with the availability of information found in their annual reports, in the Official Gazette of Manaus, in the official website of the Municipal Department of Education of Manaus, among other documents. Besides these sources, documents that refer to educational policies such as legislation, resolutions, decrees, reports, norms, and others. These documents contributed to define the context of mercantilist strategies in the education. From the methodological point of view, the documental analysis prioritized the permanent crossing of several internal sources. Thus, it is based on Evangelista’s (2008) considerations, when evidencing that, when working with documents, one should consider the result of social practices, and expression of the human consciousness.

The Influence of Hegemonic Private Organizations (HPOs) on Education Policies

After World War II, the world’s leading nations decided to organize international institutions that could govern and discipline the actions of countries through agreements, treaties, and regulatory and intervention policies in various fields such as the economic, social, cultural, and environmental fields. Thus, to discipline financial relations in the economic field, a system of public rules was adopted for this purpose, in 1944, in Bretton Woods, United States. Two organizations were created, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IBRD, with the purpose of assisting in the reconstruction and development of member countries in the post-war period; the IMF, intended to supervise the international monetary system and ensure a stable exchange rate system.

The international trade rules were discussed in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), signed only in 1947, because the text, in its entirety, was refused by the United States of America, since the objective was to create rules to improve the conditions of international trade and reduce customs tariffs, allowing more affordable prices for consumers and creating the economic conditions for the reconstruction of countries which were destroyed by the war.

In the beginning, this agreement included 23 countries, but after eight rounds of negotiations until 1994, 125 countries were members of GATT. The last round of negotiations, the Uruguay Round, lasted from 1986 to 1994 and culminated in the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Today, the IMF is the pillar of the international financial system, working together with the World Bank, and other similar institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Moraes (2000) analyzes that in the 1980s neoliberal economic adjustment programs were imposed on Latin American countries as a result of the processes of debt renegotiation and monitoring of local economies by the World Bank and the IMF: “Argentina, with Menen; 1989, Venezuela, with Carlos Andrés Perez; 1990, Fujimori in Peru. And, since 1989, Brazil, from Collor to Cardoso” (MORAES, 2000, p. 17). However, two major demands appear in this context. On one hand, the privatization of state-owned companies and public services, and, on the other hand, the creation of new regulations, a new legal framework that reduces the interference of public powers over private enterprises. It is important to emphasize that these demands, implemented by the neoliberal doctrine, opened the way for campaigns to transfer social activities such as education, health, etc. to the private sector (MORAES, 2000).

Thus, Neoliberalism, as the hegemonic project in Western countries, commanded by the financial fraction of capital, will be the theoretical and political support of such a transformation, becoming hegemonic in the central countries in the 1980s (with Margaret Thatcher, in England ; in 1979, with Ronald Reagan in the United States; in 1981, with Kohl; in 1982 in Germany) and in Latin American states, basically from the 1990s on (with the Chilean exception, where Neoliberalism was established by the Pinochet dictatorship as early as 1973). According to Montaño (2014, p. 73), “as a partial solution to the capitalist crisis, neoliberalism aims at the reconstitution of the free market, reducing and even eliminating the state social intervention in various areas, and activities”.

Perry Anderson (2008), when making a history of the neoliberalism, showed that it was a reaction, both theoretical and political, against the Welfare State and its interventionist character. According to Hayek, the main formulator of the neoliberal project, the roots of the crisis of capitalism were located in the excessive power of the unions, which had consumed the bases of capitalist accumulation through their wage demands and their pressure for the State to increase social spending. The solution therefore laid in the ability to maintain a strong State, willing both to break the power of the unions and control money and to decrease social spending and economic interventions (ANDERSON, 2008, p. 9-11).

The reforms of the State that were introduced in Latin America in the last three decades have configured changes in the way the economy, politics, education, etc., are conducted, as well as in the relationships established among these spheres. In order to promote the reorganization of production relations and to contain the indebtedness of less developed and developing countries, governments and multilateral financial organizations realized the need to apply adjustment policies and structural reforms in the different countries to ensure the governability. These policies, designed by the neoliberal doctrine to contain the economic crisis for Latin America, announce that the crisis is not of the capitalist mode of production, but of the State. Thus,

for the neoliberal theory, contemporary democratic institutions are irresponsible because they cause fiscal crisis by spending more than they collect, the proposal, therefore, is to decrease the State’s performance towards social policies to overcome the crisis (PERONI, 2018, p 216).

The author points out that the role of the State with regard to social policies is altered, since, according to liberal assumptions, the prescriptions focus on rationalizing resources and emptying the power of institutions, considering that democratic institutions are permeable to the pressures and demands of the population, besides being considered unproductive by the market logic (PERONI, 2018).

The intellectual role is played by hegemonic international organizations, especially PREAL (Program for the Promotion of Educational Reforms in Latin America), whose founding stemmed from the capital’s strategic move to create a hemispheric network, addressed in the discussions of the First Summit of the Americas in 1994. The following year, in the document of the 1st Summit of the Americas, called Plan of Action, the beginning of PREAL’s activities was ratified. According to the U.S. State Department, the First Summit of the Americas gave rise to a wave of cooperation, and education presented itself as the mainspring of the axis. According to the third section of the Plan of Action, governments should, among other things, promote universal access to the primary education through an integration between public and private sectors, “non-governmental actors, and with the support of multinational institutions” (PLAN OF ACTION - I SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS, 1994).

The PREAL is directed by the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C., and the Corporation for Research Development (CINDE), based in Santiago, Chile, and funded by the following organizations: United States Agency for International Development (USAID) U.S. Agency for International Development), International Development Research Centre of Canada (IDRC), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), World Bank (WB), International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), GE Foundation, among other sponsors (PREAL, 2020).

Despite the fact that in all the documents produced by PREAL there is the declaration that the ideas contained in the texts are of the entire responsibility of their authors, it is evident here their condition of intellectual of the ruling and dominant class, given the entrepreneurial initiative in the foundation, the consortiums, the origins of the financing, the partnerships, and, fundamentally, the ideological aspects recurrent in the texts, which leave no ambiguity about the political identity of the organization - “prove that they are only the servants of the bourgeoisie” (MARX; ENGELS, 1998, p. 30).

In documents from the WB, PREAL, IDB, among others, it was found that at least three dimensions of sustainability of the reforms are of great concern to international organizations: the political dimension, the financial dimension, and the technical dimension.

PREAL’s website announces the objectives: to engage the whole society in processes of the educational transformation; to evaluate and monitor progress toward improving the quality of the education, and equity in learning outcomes; and to provide evidence, knowledge, and information to inform decision-making and the implementation of policies, and practices toward universal, equitable, and relevant quality education.

The political axes are also announced: educational transformation, and teacher professional development; learning standards, and assessment; quality school management; autonomy, and accountability; responsible governance of the education system; innovation and good practices; public-private partnerships, and education financing. To this end they produce books, documents, reports, electronic newsletters such as, for example, the one announced in “Global Trends”, which expresses the hegemonic productivist function of this body:

The year 2015 met the deadline for assessing the achievement of the goals set by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Education for All (EFA) program on various aspects of the educational change, including na equitable access to the quality education. While the MDG education goals were to achieve the universal basic education, and the gender equity, especially at the basic levels of the school system, the EFA goals aimed to expand educational opportunities across fields and levels. The Education Agenda 2030 Framework for Action (Incheon, 2015) established Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) to achieve a universal goal to be met in the period. Under this goal, the world’s countries have committed to take actions that lead to “ensure inclusive, equitable, and quality education and promote lifelong learning.” Seven related goals and three implementation modalities are those that will theoretically enable the achievement of the overarching goal (PREAL, 2020).

In the declaration of this announcement, it is confirmed that the implemented actions interfere directly in the basic education, through a series of goals operated by programs, projects, among others. One can notice that the announcement in PREAL’s regional platform of education brings global objectives introduced sequentially in periods established for their fulfillment, thus assuming the protagonism of the definition of the educational policy in Latin American countries and in Brazil. It becomes clear the project of substitution of the State, as the subject of educational projects, by certain economic groups that directly assume such function. It is clear the role of PREAL as an instrument to promote this transition.

As for the PREAL’s performance through its publications, one can see that it aims, on the one hand, to debate policies that contribute to improving quality and equity in education and, on the other hand, to evaluate and monitor the educational progress; to identify and analyze good practices; to promote informed discussions on issues of the educational policy, and educational reform. It is worth noting that these publications (especially the PREAL documents, and summaries related to teachers) carry their own strategy of strengthening, and naturalizing the conception of the business world, and its patterns of sociability. Here is the model of a society disseminated by PREAL intellectuals, identified with neoliberal assumptions and disseminated as part of the business mobilization strategy.

Gajardo (1999) refers to the emergence of new pacts in favor of the education, and a consensus around the reforms. As for the educational reforms in the different countries, they are categorized according to more specific objectives. It can be clearly observed how the reforms have followed the same paths throughout the continent. It is in the case of the implementation of new standardized evaluation systems that the true uniformity of educational proposals is revealed. It is observed that 13 countries in the Latin American region adopted evaluation systems between 1990 and 1998. In Chart 1, according to Gajardo (2012), the author indicates the year of implementation of these systems. The only exceptions are Chile, which created the SIMCE at the end of the previous decade, and Cuba, which already had its own system since the 1970s.

CHART 1:
National Systems to Measure the Quality of Education Country Year of Implementation of the System

Argentina (SINEC)	1993
Bolivia (SIMECAL)	1996
Brazil (SAEB)	1993
Chile (SIMCE)	1988
Nicaragua (SINED)	1998

• SOURCE: Gajardo (2012, p. 27).

According to Gajardo (2012), one must acknowledge the effect of multiple multilateral and ministerial meetings, and the effort of development agencies to forge the new consensus of moving education to the top of the agenda. Decisions were made to focus on equity issues, emphasizing learning outcomes, creating learning environments, and making the education a tool for the economic and social development. Encouraged by this new consensus, international banks became the funders of the education reform. As the author notes, the World Bank and the IDB adhered to the Jomtien declarations and shaped a series of strategies that were considered effective, including the creation of learning assessment systems. Gajardo (2012) explains the relationship between the bank’s strategies and reforms in the region:

Dado que estas recomendaciones sirvieron de base para establecer las condicionalidades de préstamos y donaciones, la mayor parte de los proyectos ejecutados con créditos provenientes del Banco también se orientaron hacia la mejoría de los climas institucionales para favorecer los aprendizajes, el fortalecimiento institucional, la modernización de la gestión y la formación de maestros em servicio (GAJARDO, 2012, p. 335).

It is noted in the text that in several Latin American countries, in the context of projects to improve the quality and equity of the basic education, governments are financed with resources from loans with the World Bank and the IDB. The IDB is the main funder of PREAL for the educational area, created in 1959 by the United States, with the apparent objective of materializing as an organizing institution for the development of Latin America and the Caribbean; however, for its creation, some historical determinants were present. Ianni (1979) states that

Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). In June 1961, the important Punta del Este Conference was held, which gave rise to the Declaration of the Peoples of the Americas, and the Punta del Este Charter, the documents that were the basis for the creation of the Alliance for Progress. In April 1965, there was a U.S. military intervention in the Dominican Republic (IANNI, 1979, p.121).

According to the author, the political doctrine was proposed by dominant groups in the states, in collaboration with dominant groups in the Latin American countries. Thus, “it was after the victory of the socialist revolution in Cuba that the dilemmas of solidarity and interdependence in Latin America were most openly manifested” (IANNI, 1979, p. 119). Dominant groups in Latin American nations sought to examine and redefine their positions of control over political, and economic relations. Also noteworthy is the way the IDB has been conducting its domination work in Latin America and the Caribbean, which goes by the theory of development thought up by ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), which, very briefly, disseminates the notion of underdevelopment as a historical stage in the formation of Latin America and not as a capitalist production. One can see, a priori, that the IDB is linked to the economic, cultural and political controls of these countries which present a dependent capitalism, through the disguised demand of conditionalities of the technical assistance.

The list in Chart 2 brings experiences registered and denominated as “good practices in education policy”, published in the PREAL’s Latin American Regional Education Platform. These projects were developed by capital hegemonic private organizations. From the Practice Series “Corporate Education Alliances: Good International Practices”:

CHART 2:
Innovation and Best Practices in Latin America (1999-2011)

Itaú Social Integral Foundation	Integral Education Program and Portuguese Language Olympics Excellence in Educational Management and Improvement of Education in the Municipality.
Telefônica VIVO Foundation	EducaRed - Information and Communication Technologies applied to Education.
Ayrton Senna Institute	Se Liga, Acelera Brasil and Gestão Nota 10 Reorganización de la Trayectoria Escolar. Clases de Aceleración.
Lemann Foundation	Quality in Education and Scholarships
Gerdau Institute, Jacobs Foundation and Lemann Foundation	Educación para el Desarrollo. Ejemplos de Asociación entre empresarios, gobiernos y sociedad civil en pro de la mejora educacional.
Bradesco Foundation	Quality school network and virtual school National Tax Education Program, Educar Bovespa Project, Caring for the Future.
Roberto Marinho Foundation	Futura Acelera Jovem Channel - Educational Technologies.
GIFE Group	RED GIFE - Articulation of corporate action.
PREAL, Getúlio Vargas Foundation, Ford Foundation	Entrepreneurs and Education in Brazil.

• SOURCE: own elaboration, with data from PREAL, 2020.

It is understood that there is an agenda for Latin American education coordinated and financed by international organizations that need the articulation of the bourgeoisie of the National States for its materialization. Under dependent capitalism, in the particular historical form assumed by capitalism in its expansion process in less developed and developing countries, such as those in Latin America, the accumulation of capital would be institutionalized to promote the simultaneous expansion of the hegemonic cores to the central economies, and to the dominant sectors.

This context contributes to clarify something that is on the borderline of the relationship between the public and the private, and makes explicit the conjunctures marked by the economic globalization and by international organizations in the process of educational reforms, playing the ideological role of propagators of neoliberal ideals, trying to grasp the social function of the various educational processes in the production and reproduction of social relations.

The merchandising process in the formation of teachers in the Municipal Network of Manaus/AM

In order to demonstrate in the field of the public education the hegemony of private organizations, and the implications of this relationship built by capital and reinforced by multiple mechanisms of domination managed by the hegemony of the State, it is important to point out that one of the largest private organizations acting in Brazilian public education is the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). One can see that there is an agenda for education in Latin America, coordinated and financed by international organizations, and oriented in documents produced by these organizations that require the articulation of the bourgeoisie of the National States for its materialization.

This is done based on the understanding that this articulation is part of a broad movement around the managerial project of education, configured by the neoliberal hegemony that has been promoting the disfiguration of public education, based on productivist and meritocratic quality standards.

That said, the entrance of the IDB as an intellectual, with its framework of conceptual formulations, imposes the major interference of the capital in the education, but accompanied by the ideological and physical strength of the bourgeois class that has been materializing in the school environment, and influencing educational policies. This movement expressed the tension among educational thinkers around the extension of the public education for all, revealing the contradictory and conflicting dimension between the permanence and the social transformation that could be brought about by the education.

Today it can be said that the education policy makers, such as the Jomtien Conference of 1990, the United Nations for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the World Bank (WB), were the main intellectuals of capital in the dissemination, and execution of the neoliberal reform proposals.

It is observed that the social relations built by capital are established, maintained and reinforced through domination mechanisms, managed by the State hegemony and inculcated in documents produced by private organizations, reflecting on the political dimension and ideological effectiveness - which established a global consensus in favor of new efforts in the educational field - and activated by the numerous demands of developing countries. This has led international banks to become the funders of educational reform in most countries.

It is understood that the phenomenon of the incorporation of the market logic in Brazilian teacher education through the public-private partnership system in education is more clearly revealed in situations marked by the economic globalization, the hegemony of neoliberal political thought, the strengthening of technological and informational applications in social relations, and the constant pressure from the economic sector for State reforms and the redefinition of social and educational policies. In this context, there has been a growing valorization of the market as a regulator of social relations, which has become a parameter of quality destined to organize the functioning of the public sector, and this has been reflected in new orders for national education as a social public policy action.

However, it is important to understand what is in place beyond the evidence presented by the contradictory structure of this phenomenon, which has amplified the antithesis and contradictions historically marked in the consolidation of public education on the national scene. This public-private partnership system is supported by laws and norms that regulate partnerships, covenants, and political agreements between the public and private sectors, and legitimize different forms of privatization of the public sector. This perspective has been strengthened based on a new ethical, moral, and political justification for privatization that is revealed in the modern project for the organization of education in capitalist countries.

With the establishment of agreements and contracts of companies, banks, foundations and institutions with the public sector, the logic of the market is permeating the way of organizing municipal public education throughout the country, and the educational market, with its products, services and technologies, stands out for marketing with the municipal public education administrators the supposed advantages of expansion and improvement of educational quality. The expansion related to the construction of school units and the idea of improving the quality of education marketed by the market are associated with the acquisition of products, services and technologies defined as “innovative actions to raise the quality of education” (IDB, 2013, p. 10). The purpose of the external loan agreement between the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Manaus Municipal Government (PMM) is to carry out a deep reform in the municipal education network, acting on teacher training, as shown in Chart 3.

In Chart 3, it is observed that the process of implementing the actions of the IDB-PMM Agreement meets the international conditionalities and points to a single path, in which the educational system must undergo a reform aiming to better qualify people to face a more competitive world, more in tune with the market. Thus, the triggering process of the municipal educational policy in which the PROEMEM actions were implemented enables the institutionalization of private interests in the public school space and counted on the participation of municipal public education professionals, working in Manaus education network that, since 2013, began to study and define this form of public-private partnership system as a means of organizing early childhood education, and elementary school.

CHART 3:
Proposed actions for implementing PROEMEMEM

ACTION

OBJECTIVE

Quality Improvement in Basic Education

The objective of this component is to improve the income and school performance of students in the municipal education network by improving the quality of education in Elementary School and Kindergarten. Actions planned: Hire consulting for the design of pedagogical proposal for the entire cycle of Basic Education; Improve and expand the coverage of the Learning Acceleration Program - Flying to the Future - aimed at correcting the flow of students in Elementary School with high age-year distortion; Support the strengthening and expansion of the Overcoming Times Project, aimed at the school reinforcement for students with low academic performance; Develop and implement innovative projects in the teaching of Portuguese and Mathematics for primary school students; Acquire and distribute didactic and pedagogical materials for the CMEI and EMEF; Strengthen the competencies and skills of teachers, managers and administrative professionals through the design and implementation of continuing education activities and the dissemination and exchange of good teaching practices; Hire consultants to support 100 schools in the municipal network, including all units that were built with funds from this Program, in the design (or redesign) of their political-pedagogical projects; Hire consultants to design a special education project for women, especially those who have children and/or work.

• SOURCE: Own preparation, with data from the IDB-MPF Agreement document (2013).

In this process, there has been a growing naturalization of the application of the investment of municipal public resources for the hiring and payment of services and products of the educational market and the use of them in public schools of the municipal public network of Manaus. The occurrence of factors related to the deregulation of national and the municipal educational legislation has regulated a legal and institutional framework to ensure the elevation of market interest enterprises within public schools. This reality has been possible, among other factors, because of the centrality that school education has in the constitutive framework of the educational policy, inserted that is in the framework of social policies in which the instrumental character predominates, focused and subordinated to the international economicist logic (KRAWCZYK, 2012).

As shown in Chart 3, in order to implement the action entitled Improvement of Quality in Basic Education, Manaus Municipal Government signed an agreement with the Itaú Social Foundation (FIS) to implement the Educational Tutoring Program, which, according to the document Area Tutoring Guide, defines tutoring as an in-service training methodology, carried out in the school’s daily routine, by the tutor, with the tutored (teacher), to trigger the learning process, seeking to add new knowledge, of practical and modeling nature, with the objective of improving the students’ learning results. This document presents the tutoring principles, whose tutor work routine is based on some principles, such as learning by doing, partnership, customization, protocols, and agreements, intentionality and transparency, focus on students’ learning (ITAÚ FOUNDATION, 2010).

For the IDB, investing in teacher training and monitoring for better student performance is proven in the PROEMEM document, “provided that it is possible to give to these professionals a more active role in continuing education, and regular monitoring of teachers” (IDB, 2013, p. 13).

The Educational Tutoring Program (PTE) is a program of the Itaú Social Foundation, which brings the fundamentals of change to contribute to the improvement of Brazilian education: The New York Education Reform: Possibilities for Brazil and Charter Schools in Brazil: The Experience of Pernambuco. These foundations correspond to the IDB guidelines that preach the decentralization of the school management and the centralization of evaluation systems, the supervised autonomy of the school community (principal, teacher and students) by accountability and control mechanisms, operationalized by student performance tests. The commercialization of products, services, and technologies of private organizations became central to the financing of PROEMEM’s actions in the public municipal network, specifically in the area of teacher training.

In this way, it is questioned what this policy of the external loan agreement represents and how the relationship with the systematized knowledge in public schools occurs from the perspective of hegemonic private organizations, seeking to understand the role of education professionals in this process. The acceptance of this logic strengthens a new ethical-moral and political justification for privatization in the modern project of education and reinforces the predominance of the interests of private organizations in the educational sector, which imposes itself over the public and state interests.

A maximum program, a minimum teacher: mercantilist strategies for teacher training

It is understood that continuing education for teachers is one of the ways in which the private sector enters the public sector. Such proposition refers to the form of the IDB’s action in the city of Manaus, financing the entry of private organizations in the teacher training as a strategy to convert teachers to the updates of the capital project. Thus, it can be seen that international organizations such as OECD, UNESCO, and the World Bank “[have] focused on the issue of the teacher training and the role that this professional plays in the process of teaching, and learning in a knowledge society, in the capitalist logic.

It is notorious that the entry of private organizations in teacher education deepens the privatization of basic education in the most varied ways. Including the insertion of the business fraction in education through the public-private partnership system. Evangelista and Shiroma (2014, p. 32) indicate that there is a commitment of “business groups organized in networks to interfere in the directions of education, whose general project is to reform education”.

Thus, the private logic has penetrated the teacher training in the city of Manaus, and it is evident the implementation of the actions of the Itaú Social Foundation and the Telefonica Foundation that sold products, services, and educational Technologies, and inserted themselves in continuing education of elementary school teachers in the Municipal Education Network of Manaus. Chart 4 shows the year of implementation and the service acquired in the agreement signed with these foundations, which work in the teacher training.

CHART 4:
Private organizations involved in the teacher training from 2015 to 2021

YEAR OF IMPLEMENTAION	PHO	SERVICE
2015	Itaú Social Foundation	The Educational Tutoring Program (PTE) develops a continuous in-service training for teachers on probation and management teams in the school units of the Municipal Secretariat of Education (SEMED)
2017	Telefônica VIVO Foundation; La Caixa Banking Foundation; Vitória Amazônica Foundation (executing partner).	The ProFuturo Digital Classroom Project involves training for elementary school teachers, pedagogical coordinators, school principals, and technicians from the secretariat for the development of programs, projects, and activities related to learning.

• SOURCE: Own preparation, with data from the Official Gazette of the Municipality of Manaus (DOM, 2018).

It can be seen that the private sector enters the public sector through the teacher training, using various strategies, for example, the sale of products together with the service offered to teachers, through the argument of corporate social responsibility with public education, in which other partners are hired for the teacher training, as is the case of the Itaú Social Foundation and Telefônica Vivo Foundation. In other words, the sale of the product comes with the whole package for the client.

In this context, the educational policies directed by these private organizations modify the work, training, and teaching career; “teachers can only consume the products of the heated and profitable market” (SARTI, 2012, p. 325). In the analyzed documents produced by SEMED/Manaus, referring to the Educational Tutoring Program (PTE), the following statement was verified in all the documents collected:

The content of this EAD activity is part of the methodology developed by the Improving Education Program, an initiative of the Itaú Social Foundation with the technical partnership of CIEDS - Integrated Center of Studies and Programs for Sustainable Development. All materials cited are for use in the Program, from the Itaú Social Foundation and CIEDS. (SEMED, 2020).

From the above, one can demonstrate the interrelation present in national documents, coming from private organizations, as they highlight the centrality in the teacher training for solving educational problems, improving the country’s development and reducing social inequalities. This is the justification that guides the entry of these private organizations in the basic education teacher training.

It is confirmed, therefore, that the market enters the school through the logic of production, projecting the maintenance of hegemony and conformism around the form of action of the hegemonic bourgeois fraction. Thus, it is evident the organicity of the actions of the most varied private entities, in an attempt to consolidate a policy for public education and the creation of a market niche to be acquired by the State.

The mercantilist strategies in the conduction of continued education for teachers of the Manaus public municipal network are the agreements established for the school system of the Municipal Education Network. An example is the implementation of the projects Tutoria Educacional, Aula Digital, Escolas Conectadas, Escola Digital, among others already mentioned. It is first necessary to highlight that the Telefonica Vivo Foundation is one of the sponsors of the All for Education Movement (PTE).

Thus, the projects focused on the continued training of basic education teachers through free digital platforms are worth mentioning: Escolas Conectadas, Escola Digital, and Trilhas; the actions of these projects in the On-line Teacher Training: “we started to offer 19 new courses on the use of digital technologies in education expanding topics of interest to teachers” (FUNDAÇÃO TELEFÔNICA VIVO, 2020, p. 16). In the scenario of the implications of the pandemic caused by Sars-Cov-2, initiatives have been taken towards social distancing, application of remote activities and digital platforms.

Final considerations

One can conclude that the complexity of improving education is not solved by adhering to the public-private partnership system in public schools, because, as was observed in this study, financial capital has implemented actions that directly interfere in education, notably in the teacher training through programs, projects, etc. This system of public-private partnership in education has served to transfer public resources to private entities, because the conditions established in such “partnerships” impose a great burden on the State.

The IDB recommendations are not detached from those of other organizations such as the World Bank and the OECD. The process of ideological concealment resides in the meanings attributed to the public and the private. Initially, the public (state-owned) is considered synonymous with inefficiency and managerial practices, while private interests would be exactly the expression of state policy, the private being understood here as personal and corporative interests. Such defense is intrinsically linked to the central pillars of the educational guidelines proposed by capital, such as the mercantilization of education.

The IDB-PMM agreement expresses a contradictory process - in this case, its condition of intellectual of capital is undeniable, given the initiative of demands of conditionalities, to each loan made, and fundamentally the ideological aspects recurrent in the credit operation signed, which leave no doubt as to the political identity of the organization. Therefore, it is evident that the mercantile logic prevails guiding the educational policies in the capital of Amazonas. This reality shows that there are many elements that must be studied in order to understand this system of public-private partnership that is established in public education through agreements, contracts, agreements, and private partnerships in public schools. In this way, the private bank IDB plays its role in the municipal network of Manaus, through the financing of PROEMEM, with a specific way to carry out educational reforms.

Thus, the market logic is permeating the way municipal public education is organized, and the educational market has stood out by linking the acquisition and use of its products, services, and educational technologies to the supposed benefits to achieve a certain quality of education. It is observed that the market has materialized in the organization and functioning of municipal public education. The importance given to the issues inherent to the relationship between the State and education is emphasized, in face of the fact that the policies and guidelines built to guarantee the conditions of public, free, democratic, and lay school attendance, understood as a social right and a public good, are taking place in the sphere of privatizing interests.

This relationship between the State, market and education has a conflicting historical trajectory, given the antagonism of the projects of public and private interests that maintain their structural, political and ideological differences in the scenario of consolidation of Brazilian public education. It is understood that the public and the private are expressed as opposite poles and are revealed in the contradictions that emerge in the spaces of class struggles, by means of historical-social subjects in concrete movements. It means to understand its essence, not only to operate its critique, but, before and above all, to understand it in its totality and content, which can only be understood in its complexity through theoretical tools that make it possible to interpret and explain this process in education. Thus, the mediation of this process is not visible in simple acts of exchange.

The insertion of the Tutoring and ProFuturo programs analyzed is guided by the logic of the Itaú Social Foundation and the Telefônica Vivo Foundation, which have their foundations in the principles presented by the market economy. The products and services of these foundations assume the centrality of the knowledge process and the search for a so-called quality of education, configuring a fetishized process. The advance of capital over basic education assumes the most varied strategies, and, thus, the continuing education of teachers is evidenced as one of them.

It was revealed, therefore, the mercantilist strategies in the conduct of continuing education for teachers of the public municipal network of Manaus, funded by the actions of PROEMEM. The system of public-private partnership within SEMED/Manaus is not presented as unprecedented, however, it is worth pointing out that it was from the BID-PMM agreement that the expansion of Hegemonic Private Organizations (OPH) was observed in the continuing education of teachers in the municipal network of Manaus. Thus, it is stated that the implications of the public-private partnership system directly influence the educational policy for public education in Manaus, specifically in the teacher training, which brings, in the core, mercantilist strategies shaped by subservience to financial capital, establishing its lucrative ground in the educational field, and integrating the process of privatization of basic education, which strongly threatens the process of democratization of public education.

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• 1
  This article originates from and it extends discussions of research completed in the Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Amazonas - PhD Thesis in Education, with the support of the funding agency Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) and Amazonas State Research Support Foundation (FAPEAM).
• 2
  Because it is a polysemic concept, the term ideology, even in the Marxist field, presents different understandings. For Marx, the term designates the “inverted consciousness” of the real world, and in Engels’ definition, ideology is defined as “false consciousness”. (LIGUORI; VOZA, 2017, p. 518). It is conceived in this study the category ideology as a system of beliefs, values and representations that are self-produced in class societies with the goals of explaining, justifying and legitimizing the system of domination, and material structure of exploitation. In this sense, the possibility of purifying and unveiling ideology is permeated by the class struggle, and it occurs through critical discourse linked to the consciousness of the dominated class (LIGUORI; VOZA, 2017).
• 3
  In Marx’s (2017) studies, present in book III d ‘Capital, Section V, about credit and fictitious capital, he refers to the “actual process of capital valorization and the conception of capital as an autonomous that valorizes itself is reinforced” (p. 524).

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  12 May 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  21 May 2022
• Accepted
  24 Nov 2022