“They want to implement a hegemonic agenda for education”

On August 13 and 14, the International Conference “Challenges for educational research from the pandemic” was held virtually, organized by the Ministry of Education of Argentina, the Latin American Council of Social Sciences, the CLACSO Working Group “Educational policies and the right to education” and the IEAL, Education International for Latin America.

Important figures from the education system of several countries in the region participated, including Professor Dalila Andrade Oliveira from the Faculty of Education of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Brazil, who spoke to CLACSO.tv.

Eric Domergue interviewed

Dalila Andrade Oliveira understands that, in the wake of the pandemic, “the immediate future will not be the same; we will have to live with a new normal. But the most interesting thing about all of this is to consider that no education system in the world was prepared for a pandemic. The pandemic has arrived and transformed the routines of every country, especially in education. The challenges we saw, from developed countries to developing countries, are very similar, although with varying degrees of difficulty.”

Dalila Andrade Oliveira then argued that “the relationship between knowledge and sovereignty has been very present in our educational research, especially since the last decades of the 20th century. There is much talk—and still is today—about preparing educational systems, about reforming our schools to face the challenges of the 21st century, of the knowledge society. But little is said about what knowledge, little is questioned about what this knowledge is and who defines the knowledge that is valid to teach in schools, where this knowledge comes from, who produces this knowledge.” And she emphasized: “Knowledge that serves the interests of a hegemonic power relationship, of a hegemonic agenda for education, has been implemented throughout the world—or at least in a large number of countries.”