Equality, Difference and Knowledge: what are the possibilities of common learning standards when there is a “tension” between rights?

Abstract

Taking as a starting point the context of educational inequalities which has long characterized the Brazilian case, the present article aims to investigate some of the different conceptions regarding school knowledge and its distribution, which foresee different justifications and solutions for this scenario. In this process, we highlight the role that a national curriculum framework could play in the different perspectives and controversies around the proposal, from the tension between the right to equality and the right to difference. A third dimension of the idea of right is then brought up to discussion, as an attempt to overcome what some authors consider to be a “crisis” in curriculum theory (Young).