Based on a set of studies that question the global character of educational reforms since the 1990's, and on Michel Foucault's studies on discourse and on governmentality, the article examines the rationality that has ruled the present educational reforms, emphasising their main technologies of government and their relations with the production of social imaginaries and ethical regimes of individuals. It introduces, by way of illustration, enunciations scattered in official documents produced in Brazil or which, in an exogenous way, point to the desired forms of identity and performance for the economic, political and educational individual. It argues that the imaginaries and the regimes of self, promoted by the official educational discourse in Brazil, have a hybrid character, allying economicistic and "cosmopolitan" concerns with local demands characterized by the need for justice and social equality. It concludes that the discourse on the reforms and on the promotion of the quality of education has been borrowed to justify the movement to reorganize the Brazilian State on a managerialistic basis, and does not modify substantially the conditions of educational inequality among youths from different social classes.
educational reforms; educational policies; social imaginaries; ethical regimes