Is time king?

Leila R Iannone

 28/07/2024

Two recent publications caught the attention of my educational eye: the first, Ordinance MTE, no. 1,234, of July 23, 2024, which established a Study Group to analyze the impact of AI on the job market and generate public policies; the second, Bill (PL) No. 5230/2023, of July 9, 2020, which made changes to the so-called New Secondary Education. Despite the intentionality of the publications, it is necessary to point out the late nature of both. 

The first, because the ongoing technological transformations, with emphasis on the massive and instigating use of AI, They have long since entered the job market, requiring new digital, cognitive and socio-emotional skills. From this perspective, several countries already implement long-term public policies, while we, Brazilians, are in the phase of installing a GT for studies on the topic in relation to the world of work. 

The second publication, because it returned to the debate on Secondary Education, as a fundamental segment for the construction of young people's life project and their respective insertion in the world of work, after 17 years of the Reform instituted by the Ministry of Education. During this period, when the world acquired new and disturbing scenarios, only this week (07/31/2024) the Bill obtained presidential sanction. Considering that, on a daily basis, we have robust lists of innovations in the world of technologies, we suspect the emergence of an inevitable decoupling between what the productive sector and social insertion require, given the new measures that the recent publication of the National Secondary Education Policy (Law no. 14,945/2024), will add to the already obsolete curricular proposals. 

Despite the partially positive evaluation, made by several movements linked to education, the text approved with changes in Secondary Education, does not incisively address the issue of the management and use of technologies in the training of young people. Revisiting Santaella in one of his articles “Diagnosis of the Contemporary”, when he points out five attributes of current time, I focus mainly on three: the “temporal entanglement”, replacing the linearity of time with simultaneity; the “ubiquitous interactivity” of sentient and communicating people, establishing communication with machines and humans in unprecedented combinations; “acceleration”, found in changing the pace of change itself.

These attributes of contemporary times support my view that we are lost in time. We postpone debates, we accept the slowness of procedures in different instances, we ignore the need for integrated proposals between the areas of work, economic development, education and social justice. 

But this is just a brief reflection from someone who announces himself with an educational outlook, after many years on the road. These are concerns that, perhaps, are better organized for readers' understanding in the voice of Gil, the academic, when he recites Tempo Rei.

“King time, oh, king time, oh, king time

Transform the old ways of living

Teach me, oh, father, what I do not yet know.”