Professional Education as State Policy in Brazil

from Schools for Apprentice Craftsmen to Federal Institutes

Abstract

Professional education is recognized in Brazil as a right that emerges at the confluence of the constitutional rights to education and work. Originally, it was aimed at the poor - members of the working classes - and had a welfare and social control nature. These different conceptions of professionalization and the role of the state in its materialization are shaped historically at specific junctures. Thus, the projects surrounding this educational modality, implemented through public policies, must be understood from the point of view of the disputes between the agents situated in the field and guided by different and/or even divergent conceptions and interests (Manfredi, 2002; Frey, 2000).  From this perspective, the aim is to understand how the Brazilian state has intervened in vocational education throughout history and today, taking its starting point on the national scene, which is the creation of the Apprenticeship and Artisanship Schools in 1909, and traversing the path taken by the institutions of the Federal Vocational Education Network through state intervention over almost a decade, until the emergence of the Federal Institutes of Education, Science and Technology in 2008. From the analysis, it emerges that the Federal Institutes represent a new institutionality emerging from a historical path marked by clashes over a national project for vocational education, in which the role assumed by the state in its management and financing is highlighted, marking a promising trajectory for public policy.