NEOLIBERALISM AND CYNICAL DISCOURSE IN EDUCATION: THE CASE OF EXTERNAL EVALUATIONS IN BRAZIL

The hegemony of neoliberal rationality in Brazilian education has consolidated external evaluations as central mechanisms of regulation, creating a scenario of performativity that often masks school inequalities under the pretext of quality. In this context, this article aims to analyze the intersection between neoliberal rationality and cynical discourse in Brazilian education, focusing on the legitimizing role of external evaluations. The methodology adopted is characterized as qualitative, of bibliographic and documentary nature, articulating the analysis of Brazilian and North American educational legislation with critical theoretical references. The results indicate that the State operates through an “institutional cynicism’, using the semantic capture of democratic terms and the imposition of standardized goals to justify a model that causes curricular narrowing and teacher blame. It is concluded that the discourse of managerial efficiency acts as a cynical strategy to hide the precariousness of public education, evidencing the urgent need for a multidimensional evaluation that considers the socioeconomic contexts of students.