Narrating school regulations

The (psychiatric) diagnosis as a development of neoliberal education

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate what are the possible conditions for the emergence of demands for psychiatric diagnoses arising from current schools, in particular, brazilian public schools. The investigation started by confronting different models of school over time, demonstrating that each of them produced, in their conjuncture, a standard-deviation model that found school practice. Throughout the discussion, the diagnostic dimension emerged linked to the increasing evaluative systematization of schools, corroborating the neoliberal dimension of a school that seeks to achieve profits. In a theoretical problematization that dialogues with foucauldian studies, it can be demonstrated how the emergence for psychiatric diagnoses is part of the current governmental rationality of the school institution. In the conclusions, the question referring to the psychiatric diagnosis presents as a modulation of the difference, whose increasing demand in the aforementioned school context strategically reflects the equal increasing search for good rates in large-scale assessments.