Educação Popular e Educação do Campo

This text discusses Popular Education, Countryside Education, and external assessments of the Brazilian school system, which assess student performance based on standardized tests developed by individuals outside the school. The study is based on Bourdieu’s (1989; 1998; 2013) theory of social reproduction, which has as its central thesis the relationship between cultural capital and the habitus of students and their families with academic performance and success; on Freire (2023) and Caldart (2004, 2020), to discuss the reaffirmation of the struggle for education in an unequal society based on political, pedagogical, and social thinking. This is a theoretical reflection that starts from the analysis of the results of the tests of the Espírito Santo Basic Education Assessment Program, carried out in the state of Espírito Santo in 2023, to problematize how external assessments can be put at the service of the State, reproducing social differences. The theories reveal that these assessments have led schools and teachers to compete to achieve the required levels, reproducing an ideology of public bodies that, in addition to masking what is, in fact, quality education, disregards the realities of rural populations, deepening inequalities, instead of combating them.