From dream to achievement: entrepreneurial pedagogy, making education entrepreneurial, and neoliberal rationality

Abstract

Over the last decades, educational reforms have increasingly been based on the Market logic and the neoliberal rule of self-regulated, flexible and entrepreneurial individual. In Brazil, stemming from several public-private partnerships the idea of the so-called “entrepreneurial pedagogy” spread seeking to utilize the school device to disseminate the culture of entrepreneurship among children and young people. Informed by the neoliberal economic rationality, such pedagogical form argues that by adopting an entrepreneurial attitude in all spheres of life is the key to achieve objectives such as self-fulfillment, material welfare and personal satisfaction. According to this logic, in order to adapt to an ever-changing and increasingly competitive economy, the individual must learn to be the author and leading actor/actress of their own life, taking responsibility for permanently learning the competences and skill demanded by the market. To carry out this essay, contemplated the studies on entrepreneurial pedagogy in Brazil, as well as specific programs and public-private partnerships, supported by contemporary social theory. Findings are not intended to represent the totality of actions in the field of education in Brazil, but rather point to the spread of entrepreneurship as a normative model that encourages the individual to conceive him/herself as a company and to take risks, according to an actuarial rationality, which the student responsible for their training, their success or failure. Thus, the entrepreneurial pedagogy not only sells an illusion but also reduces the space for alternative ways of conceiving education as a citizen´s right and as common good.