By RICARDO NORMANHA*
It is possible to imagine that a class, in any area of knowledge, can be reduced to two minutes, in the “TikTok” style?
For a long time, I have been receiving job suggestions on LinkedIn. Despite the filters “teacher”, “professor”, “sociology”, “human sciences”, “research” and so on, most of the vacancies I receive have absolutely nothing to do with my background. Vacancies for physical education teachers to be gym instructors are the most common. If I were to think about changing careers, this would be an option, if it weren’t for my already advanced age and the health problems typical of those over 40 (lumbar disc protrusion, retinal detachment, chondromalacia and so on…) to become a physical educator.
In addition to the vacancies that are far from my professional profile, there are many vacancies that require specific registrations on other job vacancy websites and platforms (Gupy, Catho, etc.), some of which I have already filled out millions of times, always without any response from the recruiting companies, especially because I have never paid for these platforms to have access to the plans. premium that offer greater chances of being hired.
It's been a while since I gave up trying to find a good job through LinkedIn or anything like that, and I've focused my efforts on teaching in public institutions, free courses, and postdoctoral research, seeking a good job through public exams, while there are still some. But I continue to receive job suggestions from LinkedIn. I keep up the registration to observe, from the perspective of scientific research, the contours that the teaching job market has taken on in recent years. Although it is not the specific focus of my current postdoctoral research at Unicamp, in a way, observing these advertisements helps to illuminate the field of teaching work in the current moment of capitalist development.
Every now and then, some unusual job postings come up. Today was one of those days. The job posting at the top of the daily email I receive from LinkedIn was for “Teachers for Class Recordings.” Since I’ve worked recording video classes for a tutoring platform in the past—an experience I still plan to do a more in-depth and detailed analysis on—I clicked on the link in the ad to learn more about the job.
The ad initially highlights the job description: recording short, fun videos for the “Hospital Questiona” platform. At first, I thought it would be something related to hospital education, that is, a platform that would offer tools for regular education for people who are hospitalized or undergoing treatment in hospitals and, because of this, cannot attend regular school.
The researcher's curiosity made me search for “Hospital Questiona” on Google. And then I came across something that has absolutely nothing to do with hospital education. It is yet another platform for private lessons, and following the trend coach which is increasingly hegemonic in our society, “mentoring” based on an “intelligent algorithm” that promises to make the student/client achieve up to 150 more points in the ENEM.
Returning to the announcement, something surprised me, although it shouldn't have surprised me at this point in the game and knowing the direction that education is taking in the era of platform capitalism in which the logic of social networks has dominated all spheres of social life. The recorded video classes, short and fun, must be in the format of “Reels” and “TikTok” and be 2 minutes long. Yes, the classes must be two minutes long.
I ask anyone who may be reading this text, teachers or not, if it is possible to imagine that a class, in any area of knowledge, can be reduced to two minutes, in the “TikTok” style.
It is worth noting that this is not the only aspect of the precariousness that teaching work has been facing. The announcement does not make clear what the form of hiring will be. There is no mention of the CLT and, based on what is usually practiced in this type of “service”, with luck, the contract will be through a MEI. The work is described as 100% remote. And the remuneration, to no one’s surprise, is 100% variable.
This text is more of a rant, without any great analytical pretensions. However, in times of increasingly platformized education, including in the regular and official education system of the State of São Paulo, where teaching work is subject to new and increasingly elaborate forms of precariousness, the announcement of a job opening for a remote job recording two-minute video classes, in “TikTok” format, for a private tutoring and mentoring platform, with fully variable remuneration, is nothing out of the ordinary.
But that doesn't mean it should go unnoticed. Every second spent reflecting on what is happening to education in the country deserves to be valued. It is necessary to form a critical mass that can, to some extent, stand up to so many attacks.
*Ricardo Normanna is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social Sciences in Education at Unicamp.
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