Educating to live without risk

Abstract

Since modernity, risk has been an increasingly important component of social organization. The aim of this paper is to show that Basic Education in Brazil has been called to participate in the production of subjects oriented to individual management of risks in accordance with the current rationality. The article shows the way to manage risk through collective mechanisms, coordinated by the state, which appears in the nineteenth century and advances to the late twentieth century, is gradually being replaced by an understanding that each one should become responsible for dealing with their risks individually. From these theories, and taking as empirical materialpapers published in Brazil, the article shows that today several themes have been proposed for the curriculum and they have in common the fact they are, in most cases, linked somehow to the notion of risk. The analyzes developed unfold in three areas – health, income and community – and allow us to understand the existence of a confluence of factors to set up schools in producing prudent subjects, knowledgeable of the various risks they are exposed and able to act to minimize them.