Mother tongue education in Brazil

A battle of two worlds

Abstract

Considered as both the salvation of the educational system and the main agent in the failure of the schooling process, mother tongue education in Brazil is a battlefield between the traditional or grammatical paradigm and the socio-interactionist paradigm. The battle occurs on several fronts from academy to textbook to law, and those who defend the socio-interactionist paradigm are winning most of them. However, the imminent victory of this paradigm can be problematic. The new paradigm needs to consider its excessive pragmatism and utilitarianism, among other difficulties, beyond the classroom. The socio-interactionist paradigm also needs to prove that it is capable of success in an area in which failure seems to be the rule, as shown by institutional evaluations of mother tongue education.