“God bless our Brazil” - Recommendations for the comeback of the return of presential classes to the children: the transition from biopolitics to necropolitics

Abstract

This article discusses the transition of the public schools that attend children through the COVID-19 pandemic. It problematizes Brazil’s Ministry of Education’s narrative, using him as an example of post-truth that creates a scenario of sanitary security to justify a return of presential classes. The text maps the distortions, inventions and misinterpretations of data, strategies to produce the post-truth, presented by the MEC, the SEED/PR and the SEDUC/AM, contrasting these speeches with information that shows the real scenario of the pandemic in Brazil, taken from the Ministry of Health, scientific journals and official news agencies. It considers the decision of the immediate return an attempt of hiding the situation of the emergency remote education (ERE), as well as the lack of planning and investment in the recommended health conditions, exposed in official documents and research. To build this thesis, it searches the Statistical Synopsis of the Educational Response to the Pandemic of COVID-19 in Brazil, Basical Educational data that show some aspects of the ERE in the Brazilian municipal network, from Paraná and Amazonas, which concentrate a large part of children. To support this analysis, it is used the concepts of biopolitics and necropolitcs, which trigger the State racism. They conclude that the argument of defending the future of the children legitimizes the exposure of them, their families and the professionals of the school, letting subalternized population die.