How are different lives designed? A look at the Life Project and Entrepreneurial Education curriculum in the city of Pelotas-RS

Abstract

The Municipal Department of Education of the city of Pelotas – RS established the Life Project and Entrepreneurial Education curricular components as mandatory, taking into account the Common National Curricular Base (BNCC) that proposes the work on these themes in basic education. Given the national movement, corroborated by the advance of neoliberalism, that education needs to teach students principles of an entrepreneurial individual and skills to design their lives, we question how the curricular documents propose to cover the markers of differences in this context. Our investigation was based on the curricular documents proposed by the municipality of Pelotas, with the objectives of: a) investigating how the discourses involving Life Project and Entrepreneurial Education relate to the markers of difference; b) problematize how discussions of gender and sexuality are present in the Life Project and Entrepreneurial Education curricular guidelines; c) reflect on how the ways of designing one's life and entrepreneurship correspond to the different realities of students regarding gender, sexuality and other markers of difference. From this discussion, we problematize curricular documents and the ways in which neoliberal discourses co-opt and empty the notions of diversity and difference, avoiding explicit guidelines with regard to gender and sexuality.