PHYSICAL EXERCISES IN BRAZIL’S NATIONAL COMMON CURRICULAR BASE: ONE FLYING OVER PHYSICAL CULTURE’S NEST

Abstract

This article addresses the controversies surrounding the autonomy granted to physical exercise in the first version of the Brazilian National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) and its repositioning as a gymnastics’ subtheme in the second and third versions. It is theoretically and methodologically based on Foucauldian discourse analysis and uses the three versions of the BNCC, the contributions of the public consultation promoted by the Ministry of Education from September 2015 to March 2016, and the opinions of critical readers as empirical materiality. It draws from the assumption that this debate brings back long-standing disputes between physical cultural and physical fitness perspectives regarding the purposes of Physical Education. It finds that physical exercise programs are expressions of physical culture that must be included in the list of Physical Education themes according to the same criteria applied to other contents in the curriculum.