When more is less, and less is nothing the problem of literacy and school education

Abstract

This article focuses on the problem of literacy, especially its implications for school education, due to its widespread use and fluid definition, as well as the conceptual broadening and indiscriminate expansion of the term's applications, stemming from a perception of education and knowledge that is sometimes instrumental and sometimes idealistic. The thesis argued is that the idea of ​​literacy has been disseminated in the Brazilian academic and pedagogical world without critical analysis, due to an epistemological oscillation within the human sciences. What is being called literacy is permeated by diverse conceptions of knowledge and learning, encompassing a vast range of meanings that project a saturated concept, flooded with dualities and linked to functional models of skills and competencies. The article considers the foundational axes of the concept as they have been established in Brazil since the 1980s and conducts a survey of literacy occurrences, verifying their insertion and field of correspondence. The analysis demonstrates that, as it stands, the idea of ​​literacy negatively challenges the concepts of training and education, emptying them of meaning and, although presented as something new, it reproduces non-critical models of education, sometimes reinforcing the instrumental-pragmatic perspective, sometimes echoing liberal-idealist theses. It concludes that the widespread application of "literacy" as applied knowledge does not contribute to Brazilian education.