Education and Overpopulation: Notes on School (Re)Production in Brazilian Capitalism

• Autor(a) principal: Cangussu de Souza, Davisson Charles
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Comunicações
• Texto Completo: https://www.metodista.br/revistas/revistas-unimep/index.php/comunicacoes/article/view/209
• topic: Educação; classes sociais; superpopulação relativa.; Education; Social classes; Relative overpopulation; Critical reproductive theories; Brazil.

This paper approaches the relationship between education and relative overpopulation. This concept, developed by Marx to explain the relationship between poverty and the capitalist accumulation, has not been explored in the Marxist educational analyses. The present work characterizes this category and exposes its present forms of manifestation, based on the three classical types of relative surplus population (latent, stagnant and floating), besides pauperism and lumpenproletariat. From the Brazilian case study, it examines how the school production and reproduction of an army of reserve laborers in capitalism is processed. Then, it considers some educational data to substantiate the class character in school access in basic and higher education in Brazil. To do so, it presents a critical analysis of school access in the country, based on different divisions (private and public school education, daytime and evening courses, etc.). In dialogue with liberal and critical reproductive theories, it proposes an interpretative model on the relationship between education and social classes. Finally, it brings some theoretical considerations on the relationship between formal education and the reproduction of spare overpopulation in Brazilian capitalism, and presents an interpretation about the relationship between the chronic manifestation of relative overpopulation in the social structure and the country's low educational indicators.