Democracia e formação: estudo sobre a educação profissional tecnológica de nível médio na Grande São Paulo

Abstract

The research investigates, grounded in Critical Theory, particularly in the works of Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse, the relationship between democracy and formation: (a) in the guiding documents of upper secondary Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and (b) among the subjects who receive this formation, namely, the students. It is based on the concepts of democracy, formation, ideology, technique, technology, technological rationality, authoritarianism, conservatism, and social consciousness. The main objective is to analyze whether the formation provided in the upper secondary TVET is related to the democratic opinions, values, and attitudes expressed by students. The hypothesis is that there is a relationship between the type of formation offered and such democratic dispositions. The method combines (i) documentary analysis of the guidelines for technical and vocational education, particularly at the upper secondary level, and the curricula of seven programs at Centro Paula Souza; and (ii) the application of three attitude scales, answered by 213 students enrolled in upper secondary technical programs: the Ideology of Technological Rationality Scale (Crochík); the reduced Fascism Scale; and the Political-Economic Conservatism Scale, the latter two developed by Adorno and collaborators in the 1940s. Each scale represents a distinct dimension of social consciousness, without exhausting the concept. The results indicate a moderate tendency toward adherence to the ideology of technological rationality, a slight propensity toward authoritarianism, and mild resistance to political-economic conservatism. These findings suggest that the upper secondary TVET is predominantly oriented toward “technical training” to meet the demands of capitalist production, with no consistent evidence of an explicit orientation toward the formation of democratic subjects