The production of the BNCC (Base Nacional Comum Curricular) gave rise to a series of discussions on the role of school systems in Brazil. A number of educators and researchers expressed their concerns about the homogenizing perspective reflected and refracted by the document. In other words, in a country as socially and culturally diverse as Brazil is, how might an educational instrument outline “essential types of knowledge” for students, irrespective of their personal, regional, and local specificities?

On the other hand, the document also incorporates a discourse which values peripheral contributions. In doing so, it adopts a more overtly progressive tone, which accentuates the importance of diversity. Szundy, in her examination of the BNCC’s English Language component, underscores how the document subscribes to the notion of ideological literacy. The author believes that the BNCC’s introduction of an intercultural axis brings the document closer to an ideological stance which “understands languages as resources that put us in contact with otherness, with plural and equally valid ways of being and of being in the world.” A bit further, the author argues that “BNCC may urge us to situate teaching within the realm of decolonial practices”.

We could be led to think that BNCC, by laying emphasis on the situated nature of learners’ knowledge, reinforces democratic ideals and seeks to promote unrestricted access to critical education. This interpretation, albeit problematic, seems less harmful than the enunciation of universal, “essential knowledge.” However, it is also Szundy who, in her analysis of the competences and skills associated with the teaching of English in the Brazilian 6th grade, encounters an autonomous view of reading: “The use of verbs such as formulate, identify and locate in these three reading skills is at odds with the formative and political understanding of the English language found in the component’s introduction, as well as with the document’s overall apprehension of the lingua franca concept (…)”.

BNCC’s discursive and ideological diversity refracts a myriad of epistemological and axiological contradictions, illuminating a clash between ideological systems. Amidst such conflicts, however, we may find openings for the creation of new curricula. This point is repeatedly made in Szundy’s analysis as she dwells on the skills and competences outlined by the BNCC for the 9th grade in Middle Education. In such descriptors, the use of verbs such as debate, analyse and discuss could suggest the development of more critical and political linguistic practices. Yet, in Szundy’s own words: “In BNCC, the English language’s status as a lingua franca (…) is designed to assist students in developing the skills and competences they need to become selfentrepreneurs and to participate in the global world without ever calling its macro and micro structures into question; without ever examining how these very structures operate to keep huge swaths of the population at bay, deprived of any access to the commodities of an utopian global village.”

BNCC, a normative document, prescribes a conditioning of students’ reading practices. The underlying pedagogical conception assumes the existence of a Cartesian reader, equipped with enough autonomy to identify the precise routes laid down by authors, as if fruition automatically conferred such abilities. This project is incongruous with the nature of language itself, i.e., with the fact that meaning emerges through socially and historically situated contact with otherness (even when that otherness is materialized in texts). Here, the notion of ideological sign comes in handy once more, since meanings only arise in concrete communicative situations, where they are imbued with existing social values.

Internet: <doi.org> (adapted).