HOMESCHOOLING IN BRAZIL: NATURAL LAW AND THE ATROPHY OF EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE

Abstract

This paper presents an excerpt from an institutional research project that examines the contributions of Critical Theory to understanding the current crisis of Brazilian education, grounded in qualitative, bibliographic, and documentary research methodology. The objective of this stage of the research is to investigate the phenomenon of homeschooling in Brazil as a complex and multidetermined phenomenon shaped by political, economic, and religious factors. The present analytical excerpt addresses the natural law arguments advanced by advocates of homeschooling, primarily grounded in the idea of a parental “natural-law right” to the formal education of their children. By natural law, we refer here to naturalistic presuppositions of pseudo-legal normative orders allegedly situated beyond positive law; that is, such provisions would purportedly be instituted by entities superior to the State and to constitutional law (Cury, 2017). Accordingly, there would exist a right inherent in nature that takes precedence over positive law (the State). Thus, the family, as an original “natural” entity, would hold priority in the education of children, acting in accordance with its traditions and convictions irrespective of state-mandated compulsory schooling requirements, thereby legitimizing homeschooling. If approved by the Federal Senate, homeschooling will be authorized in Brazil through amendments to the Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional and the Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente, rendering attendance at official educational institutions optional. However, as argued by numerous researchers, teachers, and representative educational organizations, the educational experience acquired by children and young people through interaction with their peers in daycare centers and schools forges their personalities through democratic forms of coexistence in diversity. The findings indicate that the natural law rhetoric underpinning domestic education does not ensure the right to education; on the contrary, it precludes education oriented toward alterity, the common good, and the affirmation of autonomy amid heteronomy (of the State and of the other), culminating, from a Benjaminian perspective (Benjamin, 2012), in the atrophy of the educational experiences of children and young people.