Foucault's genealogy and education policies: analytical possibilities

Abstract

Abstract

This paper addresses the importance of Foucault’s genealogy to the analysis of education policies. The paper has been divided into four sections. In the first section, the authors argue that Foucault´s genealogy, under strong Nietzsche´s inspiration, is a kind of analysis that opposes the idea of history as a search for “origin” (Ursprung), as it seeks to understand the study objects by considering their historical plot, in an attempt to denaturalize all that is seen as if it had always been there in the world. By problematizing, describing and analyzing what is said about education policies, the genealogy enables us to evidence the processes of constitution of such policies. In the second, third and fourth sections, the authors present three researches in which Foucault´s genealogy was employed as an analytical tool .The first research focuses on the Education policies, the emergence of education administration and its displacement to education management. The second research presents the conditions for provenience and emergence of the movement known as Everyone for Education and points out the institution of performativity as one of their major effects on the Brazilian education scenario nowadays. The third research analyzes both the way that Social Assistance Policies have operated on the population through the use of school education as a privileged locus and the implications of such policies in the contemporary school, and it also takes a genealogical look to the constitution of those policies at present.

Keywords: Public Policies in Education. Foucault, Michel. History.