International educational guidelines and policies: considerations in light of Critical Theory

Abstract

This article presents a critical proposal about the advances of international educational guidelines and policies that have reached a global scale in recent decades. The investigation focuses on the intersection of internal and external educational policies, based on the overlapping interests of the global market. This mercantilization of education, denounced since the middle of the 20^th century by Theodor W. Adorno, compromises, according to the author, the possibility of an emancipating education. At the beginning of the 21st century, the concentration of these international policies in the field of education is represented by the hegemony of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which bases its proposals on the demands of the global market. In this context, education absorbs the appeal of the spirit of competitiveness, inherited from the economic sphere and from a business vision of society, transforming education into a set of techniques aimed at meeting the market's productivity and consumption needs. Thus, the human being is compelled to adapt to the market game, in a permanent mutual dispute between individuals as the only model of culture and social interaction. Education starts to represent a mediation between social relations and market interests, in view of the development and absorption of new technologies and the social ascension to higher levels of performance and efficiency. From this perspective, knowledge itself becomes merchandise for consumption, favoring an uncritical and reified posture of the human being.