RACIONALIDADE INSTRUMENTAL E FORMAÇÃO HUMANA OMNILATERAL: UMA CRÍTICA ÀS COMPETÊNCIAS E HABILIDADES DA BNCC E DO NOVO ENSINO MÉDIO

Abstract

This study problematizes contemporary educational reforms in Brazil, focusing on the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) and the New Secondary Education model, by analyzing their implications for human formation through a critique of instrumental rationality. The reflection takes as its starting point the role of the school in light of the emphasis on competencies and the growing alignment between education and the labor market. The objective is to understand to what extent these policies contribute to an emancipatory form of education or reinforce a logic of functional adaptation. The article brings together normative documents and theoretical contributions from authors such as Paulo Freire, Dermeval Saviani, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer, whose reflections help elucidate the tension between adaptation and emancipation, as well as the contrast between the perspective of omnilateral education and models oriented toward technical efficiency. The methodology consists of a bibliographic discussion of the theoretical frameworks and their application in the analysis of legal texts. Through this approach, it is possible to observe that, although official discourses emphasize autonomy and youth protagonism, the focus remains on the development of competencies, curricular flexibility, and the fragmentation of educational pathways. This contributes to reinforcing historically constituted inequalities, while relegating to a secondary role the school’s function as a mediator of systematized knowledge. Such a scenario underscores the importance of advocating for an integrated education that articulates work, science, and culture as a fundamental condition for critical and emancipatory formation.