Competencies in High School Curriculum: dialogues with Hannah Arendt

Abstract

This article problematizes the terms competencies and skills present in the curricular regulations for high school, in articulation with the thought of Hannah Arendt in her essay The Crisis in Education. It adopts the document analysis of the National Curriculum Guidelines for High School (1998; 2012), the National Curriculum Parameters for High School and the National Common Curricular Base for High School (2018). It uses the IRAMUTEQ software to aid the analysis. The results point to the prevalence of private interests over the common good, aimed at the immediate insertion of young people in the labor market and towards a conception of citizenship that is close to market ideals. It is concluded that the strong presence of these competencies reflects the crisis of modernity in education, revealing the immediatist character arising from contemporary presentism.