Revisiting the sense of education from a critical perspective to contribute to social justice

Echeverria, Priscilla (2023) Revisiting the sense of education from a critical perspective to contribute to social justice. Power and Education, 15 (2). pp. 122-131. ISSN 1757-7438

Abstract

This discussion article offers a revision of the meaning of educating in times of neoliberalism when we care about social justice, proposing that more than a speech about it, a critical education would consist in putting efforts into developing democratic human interactions.The Western neoliberal societies in which we live nowadays, have given education an important place as an engine of development, but paradoxically, have acquired instrumental rationality as common sense, making decisions in educational processes driven by an interest of control. Thus, these societies have developed educational systems obsessed with instrumental criteria to improve quality, such as effectiveness, efficiency, and performance. Therefore, the micro educational level, the human interaction, has impregnated with this instrumental logic, dehumanizing the people involved, mainly teachers and students, turning them into objects that must be able to achieve predetermined results.Considering this concern and following the thinking of Iris Young and Hanna Arendt, this work seeks to shed light to orient educational processes to strengthen social justice. In order to reach such aim, this article defends that any attempt to educate should start from the micro educational level, trying to confront dehumanizing logics of control and rejecting domination by interacting in a democratic way that strengthen the capacity of action of others.