TEACHING ENGLISH ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS: FROM EXPANSION TO REQUIREMENT

Abstract

This article deals with the agenda of the policy of expanding language teaching and legal demands on foreign language in elementary school, from the nineteenth century to nowadays focusing on the debate on the provision of teaching English in contemporary legislations. Through documentary analysis, and supported by authors such as RAJAGOPALAN (2013, 2005), LEFFA (1999), SAVIANI (2005), FRIGOTTO and CIAVATTA (2003), it was possible to conclude that the policy agenda for the expansion of language teaching, as well as its legal demands and the geopolitics of the teaching of English from the nineteenth century to the present, favored the contradictory character of language teaching, making a relation of ideological domination simultaneously with the demand for emancipation through the knowledge of a foreign language.