Homeschooling in Brazil: A public policy moving against the right to democratic education

Abstract

We analyzed the threats of the "conservative" movements that materialized in the approval by the House of Representatives of Bill 3.179 of February 08, 2012, which provides the possibility of offering Basic Education at home. This allows fathers, mothers, and legal guardians to educate children at home without constituting a crime of intellectual abandonment. It was found that the prominent conservative wave, from 2014 on, is based on disqualifying Freirian thought, intervening in the pedagogical and curricular perspective arising from the struggle of social movements. Furthermore, we investigated the documentary bases of the Ministry of Education, such as the booklet "Homeschooling: a human right of both parents and children," which presents homeschooling as a type of education directed by parents aiming at the full development of the person, their preparation for life, the exercise of citizenship, and qualification for work. Thus, we resort to the manifestations of Brazilian educational entities committed to public, lay, critical, reflexive, and inclusive education to ratify how the "conservatives" have been insistently removing social rights through their actions in educational policies. Finally, we reinforce that the proposal hurts the constitutional right to education when it grants lay parents the task of educating their children at home, thus removing from the State the obligation of democratic education for children and young people.