Propaganda, Media, and Education: The Official and Advertising Discourse on the 2017 High School Reform

Abstract

This article brings the results of a research that analyzed the advertisements about the 2017 high school reform, making counterpoints with the reality of the Brazilian educational system and taking into account socioeconomic issues, interpretations of the text of the law, and historical perspectives of the policies for high school in Brazil. Techniques of document and content analysis were employed by using the Iramuteq software for examining texts in the light of a bibliographic matrix supported by the main axes of dialectical historical materialism. We identified two axes in the advertisements: the defense that Law no. 13.415/17 brings vigor and an air of renewal and novelty to high school on the one hand, and, on the other, the exaltation of a supposed freedom of choice by students for the curricular trajectory according to their ambitions, desires, and personal goals for the future, which would increase their satisfaction with the school experience. Nonetheless, we argue that the official and advertising discourse on Law no. 13.415/17 presents fallacious content that distorts and manipulates the content of the legal text and that the main objective of the advertisements is to guarantee the conditions for implementing an educational reform that suits those interested in maintaining the social status quo, in which an elite dominates and directs society, controlling production and big capital, relegating the rest of society to an adverse socioeconomic reality in which not even education is guaranteed for all in an equal manner.