Formação humana e educação literária: a literatura nas provas do ENEM

Abstract

Taking into account the role of literature in human formation and considering that, in contemporary social organisation, school education plays a preponderant role in this process, this theoretical, bibliographical and documentary research investigates, in dialogue with contributions drawn mainly from historical materialism, literature in the evaluations of the National Examination of Secondary Education (ENEM –in Portuguese: Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio) applied between 1998 and 2020 to those who had already completed their basic education in Brazil. From a large-scale public policy of assessment with optional participation, the examination gradually became a compulsory element for access to higher education and thus for continuation of studies. In doing so, it began to influence, decisively, the pedagogical work of teachers, with various segmentations. The study considers that the ENEM was born and consolidated in a context of alignment of the Brazilian state to international determinations for basic education, which Saviani (2007) calls neoproductivist. Thus, the ENEM constitutes, contradictorily, an advance (in relation to the traditional vestibulars – universities and colleges assessment test – for access to higher education, which tended to emphasise the memorisation of sometimes irrelevant content) and regression (in relation to the pedagogical work model that it is beginning to favour, aligned with the logic of the Pedagogy of Competences). If, on the one hand, it is an important and conflictive public policy (with developments for school practices and for the establishment of generations of schooled subjects), on the other hand, we live in a scenario of instability and uncertainty regarding its future, due to the (counter)reform of secondary education, the approval of the new Common National Curriculum Base and the changes made to the ENEM model itself. We conclude that the logic of the Pedagogy of Competences, which determines the way in which Literature is approached in the exam, is incompatible with the search for an omnilateral human formation and with the modality of knowledge that the literary teaches, because: the questions disregard the integral reading experience; the specificity of literary knowledge is replaced by a utilitarian approach to language; and the frequent interpretative reductionism prevents the unveiling of reality that could be operated from an exhaustive analysis of the text and/or literary work that would trigger literary criticism, theory and historiography. In alignment with the interests that strengthen the Brazilian state's alignment with neoliberalism, the model of human formation induced by the exam is compatible with the current stage of development of capitalism and with Brazil's place on the international stage. Therefore, it is not a question of improving the exam questions, but of a radical critique of its logic and its deployment in the classrooms of Brazilian basic education, especially in secondary schools, if we want to defend the formation of human beings responsible for transforming the current state of things.