Introduction

The establishment and expansion of the Educação Profissional e Tecnológica (EPT)² contemplate political actions from the second term of the ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2007-2010), being marked by an explicit perspective of guaranteeing education and, specifically, the technological and professional education on the Public Policies of the country (^{PACHECO, 2010}). To ^{Frigotto et al. (2005}), such situation could not be materialized on the first term of president Lula (2003-2006).

To ^{Pacheco (2010}), in that context (2007-2010), there was a preoccupation about the debate related to the transformations incurred by the technological education during the 1990s, because they had caused the detachment of technical education from High School, the extinction of integrated technical courses, the creation and prioritization of Technology Higher Education Courses, the transformation of Technological Schools into Technological Education Centers, among other changes within the framework of education in general. Such environment was also marked by the political dispute around the conception of discussions related to education and the job world.

However, it is necessary to explain that, it was not an exclusive dispute of such context, after all, historically speaking, since the 19th century the demand for vocational training would turn itself to the consolidation of labor formation, which would be capable of meeting the capital demand and suit the manufacture of goods for consumption (^{MANACORDA, 2006}). And this was not distinct, in a general framework, in the historical formation of vocational training in Brazil.

In Brazil³, for the short period in which he assumed the Republic Presidency (1909-1910), Nilo Peçanha signed the Decree 7,566 in 1909 (^{BRASIL, 1909}), and created the “Schools of Craftsmen Apprentices”, these were destined to the vocational training in the elementary stage, and they were free. To ^{Sales and Oliveira (2011}), one of the aims of those schools was to teach the youth, poor kids, street children and juvenile delinquents. This fact, according to the authors, contributed to the construction of the perception that this teaching modality was only destined to poor and peripheral individuals. Meeting this argumentation, ^{Vieira and Souza Junior (2016}) state that vocational training in Brazil had been born coated with an assistencialist perspective, with the aim of supporting poor people devoid of social and economic conditions.

In the 1970s the Law 5,692/71 (^{BRASIL, 1971}) imposed the Vocational High School. In such a context, as pointed out by ^{Vieira and Souza Junior (2016}) there was the interest from the Military Government (1964-1985) to promote the industrialization development in Brazil, and that project would demand qualified labor with High School level technicians along with the industrial development, in which such situation, was marked by the intensification of the internationalization of capital. According to ^{Benakouche (1980}) there was a stage in the capitalism development characterized by the transition of the internationalization from the circulation sphere (that is, international exchange, international economy) to the internationalization of the production sphere, fact that changed the dominant forms of production in the 20th century.

Only in the 1990s, from the Law 9,394/1996 (BRASIL, 2006), that establishes the Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional⁴ (LDB), the concept of Professional Education became Technological, or as the Article 39 of the referred Law points out: “The professional and technological education, in the fulfillment of the national education objectives, integrates itself into the different levels and modalities of education and into the dimensions of work, science and technology” (^{BRASIL, 1996}). To ^{Vieira and Junior (2016}) this amendment aimed to resize, institutionalize and to integrate the actions of the high school level technical professional education into the different levels and modalities of education and into the dimensions of work, science and culture.

We have got a fact that, considering the authors and the contexts cited, since the first attempts to establish the professional education in Brazil, the dispute regarding the subjects and purposes of this training method is explicit. We initially realized a moralizing/assistencialist character over the education for work, in the sense that such modality should be a way of inserting the poor people into the productive model. And on a second moment, oriented by the adaptation to a work marketing policy, so that poor individuals become seen as subsidies that could socially insert themselves as qualified labor for the maintenance of a development focused on the production and merchant consumer of the capitalist system (^{RAMOS; HEINSFELD, 2017}).

To ^{Pacheco (2010}) it was due to the attempt to overcome this permanence that the Decree 5,154/2004 (^{BRASIL, 2004}) proposed that this method of formation (EPT) should be marked by “the qualified socially critical intervention, constructing mechanisms to favor the social inclusion and the democratization of a society’s social assets” (^{BRASIL, 2009}, p. 5, our translation). In conceptual levels the proposition of this decree would make it possible to reorganize the structure on the focus of the formation through EPT in Brazil. It is by considering this perspective that we understand how important the problematization of the concepts regarding Work and Politics is, to reflect on the formation and education of individuals in the EPT context.

We embrace the thought that, those two aforementioned categories, when History is thought of as a school subject in the EPT, make it possible to broaden the formative extensions by focusing on interpretive formulations about several dimensions of society through historical bias. Thus, when we ponder about historical education and the placement of categories such as Work and Politics in the EPT, we understand that these ones broaden our formative configuration in the field of Humanities on a Base shaped by following assumptions that prioritize the market, not the job world, and besides, portrays the citizen formation in a slight objective manner, edging generical inferences.

Consequently, we suggest that there might be evidences of focus on the categories Work and Politics that lead us to think of a tension in the BNCC ⁵, after all, we understand that the discussion, study and the deepening over these categories in the context of EPT may allow a teaching practice directed to a formation focused on more complete dimensions of the History subject. Nonetheless, we infer that such practice does not implement itself by the proposition of the categories in a formal curriculum, it is necessary that the teacher’s performance be directed to some kind of practice closer to the perspective of work as an educative principle and to the political performance in the world.

With that being said, we will present a discussion ahead, about the categories Work and Politics in the BNCC, encompassing its proposals and inferences on the formation according to the Base. We emphasize that we will follow a qualitative perspective of analysis, taking the BNCC as our primary source of study.

Work, politics and “History” in the BNCC: which categories are these?

According to the official document accredited by the Ordinance 1,570/2017 (^{BRASIL, 2017a}), it is understood that the BNCC is:

[...] a document of normative character which defines the organic and progressive set of essential learning that all of the students must develop along the steps and methods of Elementary Education, so that they have their rights for learning and development assured, in accordance with what is prescribed by the National Education Plan (PEN) (^{BRASILb, 2017}, p. 7, our translation).

However, to ^{Cury, Reis and Zanardi (2018}) the BNCC has a curricular character. For these authors it is necessary to consider that there is an educational planning in the Base, which formulates constituting principles of the Curriculum studies field, something that the BNCC tries to avoid. For it is evident that the document “constitutes itself into a normative project that establishes a prescriptive document of competencies, abilities, contents, or as they prefer to define it, learning rights” (^{CURY; REIS; ZANARDI, 2018}, p. 65, our emphasis).

Other pertinent question to ^{Cury, Reis and Zanardi (2018}) is related to the contextualization of the BNCC as a field for social projects disputes, after all, there was an objective discussion on the Base constitution, which would evidence a dispute for what would be the nature of knowledge objects. Taking these elements into consideration, the referred authors state that “unveiling the BNCC constitutes itself as educators’ obligation in order to comprehend the projects that have been put to dispute in the society and inside school” (^{CURY; REIS; ZANARDI, 2018}, p. 103).

Therefore, we understand that we may not neutralize the construction of the objects, categories, content and guiding principles of BNCC. On the other hand, it is necessary to question, criticize and historicize its construction, for, as it has been considered by ^{Cury, Reis and Zanardi (2018}), it is not a neutral document about the guiding principles of children and youths’ formation from Brazil, and in this respect, it is necessary to “put a spotlight on critical questions over content, coherence and control of the curriculum by governmental organisms” (^{CURY; REIS; ZANARDI, 2018}, p. 103). By considering this argumentation, we problematize what the conceptualization of Work and Politics is in the BNCC, guiding in the process of formations of youths in the EPT context.

It is initially necessary to consider that the BNCC is structured in the “General Competencies of Basic Education”, of which embodies steps like Elementary Education, Middle School and High School. The EPT inserts itself at High School, and specifically, High School has been organized into four knowledge fields, as determined by the LDB, which are: Languages and their Technologies, Mathematics and its Technologies, Natural Sciences and their Technologies and Human Sciences and their Technologies (^{BRASIL, 2017b}, p. 32-33). In the BNCC it is understood that each knowledge field expresses its role on the complete formation of High School students, moreover the Base “highlights particularities regarding the processing of its knowledge objects, by taking into account the students’ characteristics, the learning processes promoted at Middle School and the demands and specificities of this schooling stage” (^{BRASIL, 2017b}, p. 33, our translation).

The History Subject integrates the field of Human Sciences and their Technologies, however, in the 5.4 item of BNCC, we have got “The Applied Human and Social Sciences Area”, which, according to the Base, is integrated by Philosophy, Geography, History and Sociology. Considering specifically the subject of History, ^{Santos (2014}) argues that the teaching and learning of History need to be taken as elements belonging to education and the contemporary society. Thus, as ^{Monteiro (2007}) and ^{Bittencourt (2004}) point out, it is necessary to emphasize that History as a school subject has particular social importance in the formation of people and, we add, that this should be considered even if the BNCC is not built with this particularity in mind.

When it comes to High School, in accordance with the Base, “it is the time to broaden and deepen the learnings that were developed in Middle School, being the Ethical Education its guiding pillar” (^{BRASIL, 2017b}, p. 547, our translation). This Ethical Education would be a judgement formation about human behavior, such element is considered by the Base as being necessary for living in a society. This proposal, “has its foundation as the comprehension and acknowledgement of differences, the respect for human rights and for the interculturality, and the fight against prejudices” (^{BRASIL, 2017b}, 547, our translation).

Considering this statement of the Base, it is valid to state that, for this type of ethical formation, the subject of History has a structural character. After all, as stated by ^{Fonseca, Borges and Silva Júnior (2007}), History as a school subject has the potential to broaden the studies on the various contemporary issues, because, as a field of knowledge, it can situate different temporalities, and this ends up serving as a framework for reflections on the possibilities, needs and changes historically and socially elaborated (^{FONSECA; BORGES; SILVA JÚNIOR, 2007}).

Authors such as ^{Fonseca (2003}) and ^{Silva and Fonseca (2010}) have already dealt with how in the History of School Education in Brazil, the subject of History had molded in its proposals countless subjectivities about the school objective of how to form individuals. The authors assume the thesis that the History subject constantly brought in its basis specific objectives and functions, and these are almost always determined by political, economic and even religious purposes. Therefore, the authors admit that the History subject has been historically linked, in some way, to the formation of values in individuals.

Therefore, based on the above, we understand that both epistemic and axiological elements make History a basic subject in the intellectual and ethical formation of students in basic education. Still, as ^{Santos and Arruda (2016}) argument, learning History is the result of human intellectual work; thinking historically is not something innate; on the contrary, it is something learned, developed, and that needs to be exercised (^{SANTOS; ARRUDA, 2016}).

Hence, we emphasize that the History subject is powerful when it comes to the formation of young people in High School, after all, it allows the interpretation of the present world based on evidence of the past, providing the opportunity to approach an understanding of reality considering the historical construction of society, of institutions, of social, aesthetic and cultural values, of subjects, of memory. Or, as pointed out by ^{Santos (2014})

The study of history allows us to understand that nothing in the social world is natural, nothing is an unchanging phenomenon, social and natural events are in a movement of intense change, given that the teaching of History allows us to notice this oscillation that is the human world, built in time, so as not to accept imposed, absolute and unquestionable truths (^{SANTOS, 2014}, p. 62, our translation).

Besides, the Base ponders that:

At High School, the broadening and the deepening of these questions are possible because, in the transition from Middle to High School, not only occurs a substantial expansion in the youths’ cognitive capacity, but also in their conceptual repertoire as well as in their capacity to articulate information and knowledge. The development of observation, memory and abstraction capacities allows more accurate perceptions of reality and more complex reasoning - based on a larger number of variables -, in addition to a greater command over different languages, which improves the symbolization and abstraction processes (^{BRASIL, 2017b}, p. 547, our translation).

So far, it is possible to realize that the Base does not infer such objective existence for the History subject, as ^{Peres (2017}) states, regarding the questions related to the reformulation of curriculums, History is no longer a mandatory subject. Furthermore, the author suggests that Human Sciences have become a field of knowledge that “has been losing its importance, since they do not generally offer to the capitalist system ‘services or products’ which meet their interests” (^{PERES, 2017}, p. 7, our translation). Considering Peres’ (2017) argument is important, after all, this text problematizes the History subject, but recognizes the weakness imposed by the Base on this subject.

Further in the BNCC, after seeking for justifying and legitimating the “ethical” principle of formation at High School mediated by the Applied Human and Social Sciences, the Base presents that the area:

is organized in order to thematize and problematize, at High School, some categories of this field which are foundational for the students’ formation, such as: space and time; territories and borders; individual, nature, society, culture and ethics; as well as politics and work (^{BRASIL, 2017b}, p. 549, our emphasis, our translation).

According to BNCC these categories are founding for the learning and investigation, once it is necessary to distinguish that such categories do not mistake themselves by themes or content proposals. This way, as categories, Work and Politics have been displayed on BNCC like comprehension of ideas inferences, of phenomena and political, social, economic and cultural processes.

And at High School, they are expressed by considering students’ capacity for abstraction and symbolization (BRASIL, 2017b, p. 550). In accordance with the BNCC, the categories refer themselves to fundamentals of formation, becoming essential for the comprehension, as well as for students’ “investigation and learning” (^{BRASIL, 2017b}, p. 550).

In general, we might consider that categories function as generic concepts which may express different possible relationships that are established either between ideas or facts. According to “Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia”, there is a philosophical tradition based on Aristotelian principles which conceptualize category as something that works to designate something else, a type of inventory of everything that exists, and that would respond to the basic questions of metaphysics.

However, it is worth to mention that the historical conceptualization of category presents variations, questionings and updates. For instance, there is a skeptic notion which infers that we do not have the capacity for general formulations which are able to create an unambiguous system about reality. For that matter, what there is a system of categories which allows human beings a basis to get to know specific objects and such system would be what enables us to explain the categories from our conceptuality (^{THOMASSON, 2019}).

To ^{Thomasson (2019}) it is from Kant that a change to a conceptualistic approach is generated, stating that categories are a priori necessary to any possible cognition about objects. The author claims that:

After Kant, it has been common to approach the project of categories in a neutral spirit that Brian Carr (1987, 7) calls “categorial descriptivism”, as describing the categorial structure that the world would have according to our thought, experience, or language, while refraining from making commitments about whether or not these categories are occupied, or are ontically fundamental. Edmund Husserl approaches categories in something like this way, since he begins by laying out categories of meanings, which may then be used to draw out ontological categories (categories of possible objects meant) as the correlates of the meaning categories, without concern for any empirical matter about whether or not there really are objects of the various ontological categories discerned (^{THOMASSON, 2019}).

In accordance with the author, we understand that it is necessary to consider that several systems of categories have explanatory potential. Nevertheless, they face a variety of difficulties. In this aspect, it is necessary to consider the historic and intellectual change in the attempts for offering complete systems of categories, after all, these are “particular [...], especially among [...] conceptual or linguistic categories” (^{THOMASSON, 2019}).

Even considering ^{Thomasson’s (2019}) argumentation, we present ^{Durkheim’s (1996}) proposal. This author indicates that it is necessary to acknowledge the social origin of categories and they translate themselves into collectivity senses. To ^{Durkheim (1996)}, even if each individual expresses themselves and carry some marks, the drawn-up concepts which allow them to discern over the different objects constitute manners of how societies and social groups, in certain times, represent the different things, among them are nature, feelings, objects, the relationships and ideas. In these terms, categories are concepts that express socially elaborated things and senses.

This way, we understand that ^{Durkheim’s (1996}) effort is to indicate that there is an elaboration about reality and the human life, which is social and collectively built, this construction makes what we could call world perspective, and it offers to individuals ways of thinking, coping with, understanding, elaborating, getting to know and establishing relationships between the exterior objects and the inner ideas and abstractions (cognition) and this knowledge process ends up being expressed through concepts and symbols, including in here the knowledge categories. Then, the BNCC is being coherent while stating that categories are not contents, but problematization elements for the contents. Therefore, we understand that Work and Politics are categories that allow the field of the Applied Human and Social Sciences to build (even with some kind of partiality) explanations, interpretations and analysis about the social human world. This way, such categories may offer formative fundaments for the EPT students, when dealt with in the History subject.

With this being said, we go further on how the BNCC explores the Work and Politics categories.

The work category [...] embodies different dimensions - philosophical, economic, sociological or historical: as virtue; like a way of producing wealth, of dominating and transforming nature; as goods; or like a way of alienation. We can still talk about work as a category thought by different authors: work as value (Karl Marx); as capitalist rationality (Max Weber); or like an individual’s interaction element in society, in his/her either corporate or social integration dimensions (Émile Durkheim). Whatever the chosen way or ways to deal with the theme may be, it is important to highlight the relation subject/work as well as all of its network in social relationships.

Currently, there have been massive transformations in society, especially due to the use of new technologies. We observe transformations on the ways workers participate in several manufacturing divisions, deterioration of work relations, the oscillation of employment and unemployment rates, the use of intermittent job, the spraying at workplaces and the global increase of income concentration and social inequality. In face of this scenario, the work experience in the contemporaneity imposes new challenges and problematizations formulated in the field of Humanities, including the impacts caused by technological innovations in the production and work relationships. (^{BRASIL, 2017b}, p. 556, our translation).

We notice that the document is not concerned with historicizing work, it is presented in an aspect closer to a sociological approach. However, it is important to state that the historicization of the category can broaden the approach in the sense of thinking about its changes over time, and not attributing to work the idea of “the use of new technologies”. This temporal reductionism disaggregates complexity and reduces the importance of the historical approach. And it restricts the category of work to a shallow analogy, to the idea of employment and inequality in the capitalist society, an element evidenced in the second paragraph of the document described above.

To present an expansion of the category, we will consider some possibility of the approach through History. Kalina Vanderlei ^{Silva and Maciel Henrique Silva (2009}) state that “in its most common definition, work is every action of transformation of a natural substance into culture, that is, every transformation performed by human action” (^{SILVA, K.; SILVA, M., 2009}, p. 401, our translation). From this generalist elaboration, it is considered that the whole human society works and, in their contextual diversity, human beings create and produce their existence. Idea found in an emptied way in the BNCC document, after all, the dimension of culture is fundamental to think about the material and immaterial results of the work, and this approach is diminished in the Base. Our hypothesis permeates the disobligation of the History subject as a fact.

According to ^{Lukács (2013}), the way of interacting with nature in which something new is permanently produced has the work as a principle, not to say that this productive element is only close to an economic interpretation, but also for the human sociability and intellectuality, both elements belong to a founding category, the work. Therefore, this category holds in itself the ontological elements of the social being. Nonetheless, it is necessary to stick to the idea that “no category might be properly understood if it is separately considered” (^{LUKÁCS, 2013}, p. 41, our translation).

When it comes to work, ^{Lukács (2013}) states that “the essence of human labor consists of the fact that, at first, it is born from the fight for existence and, secondly, all of its stages are products of its self-activity” (^{LUKÁCS, 2013},

p. 43, our translation). In accordance with ^{Hostins, Rochadel and Melo (2019}), ^{Lukács (2013}) harnesses ^{Marx’s (1983}) definition of work, whose ontology distinguishes abstract work from founding work. Which is:

The first one encompasses wage activities, proper of the capitalist system, in which a value is defined for an exchange of services for money; the second one, represents the activity through which man transforms nature and he himself into an essential assumption of his existence in the world (^{HOSTINS; ROCHADEL; MELO, 2019}, p. 176, our translation).

Taking the authors’ arguments into consideration is overly important, since this analytical, temporal and historical distinction which is the form of work in the capitalist system, often understood as employment, must not be mistaken for the Marxist perspective of work as being essential for the human foundation as a social being, the biped primate becomes a social being through the work performance. Or like ^{Lukács (2013}) adverts:

Only work has, as its ontological essence, a clear transitional character: it is, essentially, an interrelationship between man (society) and nature, not only inorganic (tool, raw material, work object, etc.) but also organic, such interrelationship might figure in specific points of the chain to which we have referred to, but before all that, it marks the transition, in the man who works, from the merely biological being to the social one (^{LUKÁCS, 2013}, p. 44, our translation).

At this moment, it is worth to mention a remark made by ^{Marcuse (1978}) while studying the Philosophy of the Spirit in Hegel. ^{Marcuse (1978)} understands that:

Language, therefore, makes it possible for the individual to assume a conscious position against their neighbors, and the utterance of their needs and desires against the needs and desires of the other individuals. The antagonisms resulting from there, have been integrated through the work process which, therefore, becomes the decisive power for the development of the culture (^{MARCUSE, 1978}, p. 81, our translation).

It is important to highlight that the author deals with Hegel’s thought and, in this sense, work has been presented like a synthesis, turning itself into a creative power, which in such case produces culture, a human artificiality. We emphasize that work is also responsible for several types of integration and conditions of other subsequent forms like the family, civil society and the State. Nature has not been neglected in this dialectical dimension, including that it fits itself in the man’s history in this process, this way, history essentially becomes the human history. That is, we have figured out that it is through work that man artificializes a world and rebuilds a human existence synthesis, of a being that is social and cultural.

To ^{Marcuse (1978}), Marx’s leap was to question himself about the sense work has, with reference to the man/human development. Thus, the elaboration begins to go through the idea that work is some sort of existential activity of man himself. Not only does it mean a way of conserving vital survival, but also a way of developing a universal nature. In a nutshell, a comprehension premise is important: man is the result of his work. That is, there is a self-creation, but it doesn’t exhaust itself in the individual who works, the product is perpetuated in the world as accumulated experience for the History of humankind itself.

Besides, it is necessary to highlight that “Marx would think that Hegel’s philosophy had been the most developed and comprehensive presentation of bourgeois principles” (^{MARCUSE, 1978}, p. 240, our translation). Such distinction is necessary to demarcate the several differences existing between the authors Hegel and Marx; there is one pointed out by the author which states that, in Marx, the philosophical concepts are economic and social categories, while the Hegel’s economic and social categories are philosophical concepts. It is relevant to delimit, because, according to ^{Marcuse (1978}), the Marxist theory “has a different material fundament, the same way that the new theory has a fresh structure and a new conceptual framework which may not be derived from previous theories” (MARCUSE, 1978, p. 439, our translation).

These considerations are worth to mention, because we understand that the Work category presented in the BNCC ignores more complex elements of Work, of the social being and of the culture and, when we problematize Work in the EPT context, these ontological elements become important to be thought about, especially by considering the perspective of work like an educational principle for an Integrated High School, and we understand that the History subject has depth to approach the theme in a formative and integral manner for young people in High School in the EPT.

When it comes to the Political category, the BNCC indicates that:

Politics holds a central position in Humanities. The discussions around the common good, the political system and the forms of organization in society, the logics of power established in different groups, the micropolitics, the theories surrounding the State and its legitimation strategies and technology interfering in the ways society is organized are some of the themes that stimulate the production of knowledge in this area.

Politics is at the origin of philosophical thought. In Ancient Greece, the exercise of argumentation and discussion about the destinies of cities and their laws encouraged rhetoric and abstraction as necessary practices for debate around the common good. This exercise allowed the citizen of the pólis to understand politics as human production, capable of favoring relations between individuals and peoples and, at the same time, developing criticism of political mechanisms like demagogy and manipulation of the public interest. Politics, in its Greek origin, was the instrument used to fight authoritarianism, tyrannies, terrors, violence and the multiple forms of destruction of public life.

In the contemporary world, these observed issues both on a local and global scale gain greater visibility in Geopolitics, for it enunciates the planetary conflicts between people, groups, countries, and transnational blocs, an important challenge to be known and analyzed by the students.

Discussions on forms of state organization, of government and power are themes enunciated in Elementary School and deepened in High School, especially in their formal dimension and as complex legal systems. These themes presented in a broad way in the BNCC provide some elements that are able to aggregate several themes of economic, social, political, cultural and environmental order and allow, above all, the discussion of concepts conveyed by different societies and cultures (^{BRASIL, 2017b}, p. 556, our translation).

Different from the Work category, Politics is presented in a more comprehensive way in the BNCC. A point to be emphasized is that the presentation of this one turns to a historization, but focused on the Eurocentric axis of understanding. It is noticeable that the BNCC highlights politics around a conceptualization that aligns itself with the idea of debate, discussion, rhetorical elaboration. However, it is important to note how ^{Sartori (1992}) indicates that politics is a human endeavor and not just a theoretical concept, but something exercised, practiced, which is not reduced to a generic abstraction.

To ^{Bobbio, Matteucci e Pasquino (1998}), Politics from its classical meaning meant everything concerning the city, civil, public, and even social. In modernity, the term comes to indicate an activity or set of activities that, in some way, have reference to the State. In these senses, politics tends to be understood as “subject” when it is understood as acts of ordering or prohibiting, exercising territorial dominion, legislating, taking or transferring resources. But there is the understanding of politics as an “object”, this is it in the understanding of the conquest, maintenance, defense, extension, strengthening, overthrow, destruction of State power (^{BOBBIO; MATTEUCCI; PASQUINO, 1998},

p. 954). These definitions of subject and object are important for the author, to note when thinking of politics as an element of reflection on political activity, thus amounting to “elements of political philosophy”. After all, the BNCC incorporates these interpretive elements, for example, in the statement: “politics [...] instrument employed [...]” ^{(BRASIL, 2017b}, p. 556, our translation), here it is the object or in this case politics “[...] enunciates the planetary conflicts [...]”(^{BRASIL, 2017b}, p. 556, our translation) here allows itself to be thought of as a subject.

However, to ^{Miguel (2018}) politics “is a complex concept, about which the only existing consensus is that it must somehow include the idea of dispute for power” (^{MIGUEL, 2018}, our translation). When it comes to power, the BNCC announces it as a theme, an important element to be highlighted, even if in the Base it is placed as a secondary artifice. This is why Miguel’s (2018) remark is important:

If the concept is reduced to a minimum, politics becomes devoid of specificity and coextensive with the entire social, because it is known that power relations pervade the entire web of human relations. In the opposite direction, most of political science seeks to narrow the scope of the concept, limiting it to the strict dimensions of institutional politics (parties, governments, parliaments, elections; also, diplomacy, as external politics). In doing so, however, it does not grasp the conflicts concerning the politicization of social phenomena that escape institutional politics or the political field itself. It is not able, therefore, to analyze phenomena of social domination that involve preventing the expression of certain claims or demands in arenas accepted as political (^{MIGUEL, 2018}, our translation).

Considering ^{Miguel’s (2018}) comments it is salutary to understand politics as a process, this being the element by which one obtains access to the exercise of power in the dimensions of the organization of collective life in a society.

Therefore, ^{Miguel (2018}) understands that politics is a form of reification of a historical process. Therefore, his understanding is only meaningful in the light of his historical course and the social relations in which he is introduced. Moreover, it is important to state that, socially, women and men usually find ways to organize their lives in collectivity, so, politics also turns out to be a practice present in any human society.

According to ^{Miguel (2018}) it is necessary to draw on the numerous disputes that occur in the social scenario and in the prevailing order of domination. In this sense, the author states that the definition of what is politics consists in the elementary political dispute, that is, historically it is noticeable that, for example, the labor movement politicized labor relations, the feminist movement politicized the domestic sphere and the environmental movement politicized humanity’s relationship with the surrounding natural environment. Therefore, it is fundamentally necessary to affirm that “the understanding that labor relations, the family, and the exploitation of nature are political issues continues to have to be sustained every day” (^{MIGUEL, 2018}, our translation). In such a way, “politics is perceived as the practice that expresses the contradictions present in society and the arena in which the always provisional solutions to them are found” (^{MIGUEL, 2018}, our translation).

In summary, the author states, it is more fruitful to understand politics as a set of historically determined social relations and practices, whose scope is also the product of social struggles. In this sense, he suggests that:

A thorough understanding of politics requires both overcoming the turmoil of the disputes of the moment, connecting them to deeper social conflicts, and understanding their relation to material interests - the division of labor, control of wealth, distribution of the fruits of social cooperation, access to different social spaces (^{MIGUEL, 2018}, our translation).

Therefore, this succinct presentation of the theoretical basis that, it is important to emphasize that, the conflicts in society that give rise to the constancy of power cannot be covered without their relation to the material basis. Something not explicitly stated or proposed by the BNCC.

To ^{Gramsci (2007}):

The politician in act is a creator, a stirrer, but he does not create from nothing nor does he move in the empty agitation of his desires and dreams. It is based on the actual reality: but what is this actual reality? Is it something static and immobile, or, on the contrary, a relation of forces in continuous movement and change of balance? Applying the will to the creation of a new balance of actually existing and acting forces, based on that certain force that is considered progressive, strengthening it to make it triumph, means to keep moving on the terrain of effective reality, but to dominate and overcome it (or to contribute to it). Therefore, the ‘ought to be’ is something concrete, or rather, only it is history in act and philosophy in act, only it is politics (^{GRAMSCI, 2007}, p. 35, our emphasis, our translation).

According to ^{Coutinho (2011}), ^{Gramsci (2007}) in “effective reality” demonstrates the resumption in ^{Maquiavel (2012}) who states that it is his

[...] intention to write something useful for those interested in it, it seemed to me more convenient to go in search of the truth extracted from the facts and not to the imagination of them, for many have conceived republics and principalities never seen or known to have actually existed (^{MAQUIAVEL, 2012}, p. 133, our translation).

However, to ^{Coutinho (2011}), ^{Gramsci (2007}) elaborates that “the relation of power” is elevated to a determination of the “effective reality” itself. In this sense, Coutinho (2011) states:

We are facing one of the most important passages in the Notebooks, in which Gramsci proposes to develop one of his main contributions to what he repeatedly calls the “political science of the philosophy of praxis”, that is, precisely his proposal for an “analysis of the situations” (^{COUTINHO, 2011}, p. 128, our translation).

Thus, we can infer that it is necessary to think in a perspective that considers a greater dialectical dimension of the politics category. Not denying its theoretical, reflexive or rhetorical contribution as the BNCC seems to insist on, however, it is necessary to understand this in propositions that involve the different procedural perspectives and human relations in face of the power, not falling into an abyss that ideally separates theory from practice, but to ensure materially and historically based analysis, understanding that the power dispute takes place beyond the State and that the relations and reactions to this power involve a broad social conjuncture, ranging from ordinary individuals in everyday life to institutions and their abstractions.

Considering the above, we point out that even if the Law 13,415, from February 16th, 2017 (^{BRASIL, 2017c}), does not guarantee the compulsory nature of the History subject, we emphasize that the Teaching Units, their curriculums and the teaching activity have opportunities for resistance in order to maintain the subject. After all, as ^{Moreira and Silva (2013}), Macedo (2006), ^{Apple (2008}) among other authors in the field of Curriculum Studies point out, we cannot neglect the various power relations that permeate the curricular determinations, including the resistances in the daily school life along with the real/practiced curriculum. There is a complex dialectic between the formal documentary curriculum and the exercise, lived and practiced one.

Considerations

This article is intended to be initial, after all these are notes that need greater complexity in school practice to expand its mediations and possibilities. It is still necessary to consider that the Resolution number 4, from December 17th, 2018, which in its chapter V states: “The adaptation of the curriculums to the BNCC-EM⁶ should be completed by the beginning of the 2020 school year, for full implementation in 2022” (^{BRASIL, 2018}, our translation). As we initially presented, there is in Brazil a historical problematization around the EPT, in order to create conditions to overcome the reductionist Professional Education with a technicist character, the institution and expansion of the EPT network in the first decade of the 2000s aimed to create more integrated curriculums and educational structures that could consolidate Professional and Technological Education in a more omnilateral way.

However, the context of the second decade of the 2000s is marked by numerous disputes over a National Base for Education and, at this stage, the History subject is under attacks, which resizes our possibilities of acting. These events impose limiting situations on the History subject as well as on the Human Sciences in the context of EPT, which leads to greater difficulties for the integral formation of young people in this formative context. In this sense, it is important to pay attention to the dissolution of the History field within the Human Sciences, evidencing a broad impoverishment of the conceptualization of the categories that, because of its temporal specificity, demands analysis within the historicity and non-naturalized construction of social events that are constructed by humans through their histories in time.

Consequently, we realize that the categories of Work and Politics may be important frameworks for reformulating more solid curriculums from a formative point of view in the EPT, however, if the institutions and teachers intend to adopt the Base without more critical tensions, there is a risk of critical emptiness in the formation of Human Sciences. Apparently, these two categories might be tensioning elements in the EPT, but it is necessary to turn to more critical and deeper strategies of the historical and processual approach of human relations in time, so that young people in EPT can access more critical elements in the approach of the subject. More effort is still needed to legitimize the subject and its formative importance and, apparently, the BNCC that is available to us does not meet this demand.