摘要:The contextualization is one of the central pedagogical principles of the high school reform, implanted in Brazil in the 1990s. What are the foundations that support such basic principle, in view of the social demands, beyond those presently associated to market requirements? The study aims at developing a critical analysis of that important secondary school reform leading ideas, which are, likewise, set in the curriculum guidelines, with particular emphasis on the principle of contextualization. Our analysis is based upon an onto-Marxist perspective and characterized by a descriptive and exploratory study about context pedagogy. The principle of contextualization is configured, in practice, in a purely gnoseological and technical logic, reduced to a set of data for the solution of a problem to be tested in a mere performance, and, according to which, the real world remains subordinated to the pedagogical rhetoric and ontology succumbs under the paradigm of the so-called knowledge society.