ABSTRACT
This article is part of the disputes to hegemonize a particular sense of the democratic public school in times of coronavirus, in which distance education becomes a mandatory alternative to educational policy. Conversing with post-structuralist theoretical contributions, the paper aims to analyze the processes of signifying terms such as universal access, democracy, school knowledge and learning such as mobilized in 2020 in the Pedagogical Action Plan of the State Secretariat of Education of Rio de Janeiro. This analysis offers empirical evidence for an understanding of the effects of the intensification, in the current pandemic context, of the discursive articulation of neoliberal interests which put the school under threat. By developing such an argument, we seek to explore, beyond the language of denunciation, possibilities to reinvent a possible school of afterwards. © 2022,Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa. All Rights Reserved.