Resumen

The theoretical essay aims to understand the educational reforms that have taken place in Brazil as part of the successive stages the capitalist system has been experiencing, especially to identify relationships between mathematics and the competence-based pedagogy in shaping the education of the working class. It adopts the methodology of bibliographic review, based on authors who approach such topics in books, articles, dissertations and theses to discuss such concepts in order to understand the essence and proper appropriation of them. It is observed that the educational project, guided by market principles, among them competences, fulfil the role of concealing the impacts generated by the productive restructuring, as well as the resonances of neoliberalism, especially in the working class. Mathematics, configured with the purpose of producing competences through learning situations deemed as significant, corroborates with the structural duality, and only provides access to a partial and neutral view of knowledge.