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domingo, 12 de febrero de 2012

The Challenge of Education in a Dark Era

Despite some people see values as an old fashioned concept, they’re still a matter of life and death in the social life. The social interaction owns its strength to the force of ethical values. Let's take a pressing example: Since its inception as an independent nation, Mexico has always had a problem with the standardization of values. Our society is living nowadays hard times mostly because there are no really internalized values in people’s minds.
This is the situation: families are not doing their job regarding to values. The only possible option to counteract this anomalous tendency is through school. Here, I mean school in the broad sense: education in values both for children and their parents, young people and their family. It is urgent to work in a new educational system that could warranty the birth of good citizens.
This proposal is far beyond mere rhetoric: is about the kind of social system we want for the future. According with thinkers like Immanuel Wallerstein and Peter Sloterdijk, the world-social system as we knew it is coming to an end, due to several problematic trends in world economy, State viability and social disorder worldwide. So, we need to work right now in the construction of the next one. It is absolutely necessary to retake the way of build-in ethics as the framework of our lives.


Social Unrest Worldwide

Both, little children and teenagers are in a period of life of brain-mind re-wiring. This leads to some fundamental social attitudes: the process of socialization and the modulation of violence. With this in mind, formal education has to work over a rich values environment.  Such environment has to be meaningful, long-lasting and charming for both little children and teenagers.
Since the Talcott Parsons’ work, we know that the only way to produce social interaction is through different sets of shared beliefs. Life in society functions primarily as a double way dynamic between common assumptions and personal decisions, which is the space of social common symbols. Our times need to imagine new ones, according to the present and actual challenges, such as the social unrest regarding politics, the caducity of the traditional family order and global economy perversions that push micro economy to the limit.
If I may use the expression, the tactic is kind of a “brain wash” to our new generations in order to create a new social basis. Three are the fundamental principles to work on: respect for human life and human dignity, respect for the environment and respect for themselves. Such must be a pervasive program, apart from politic interests and power group manipulation. Necessarily, the educational system is part of the State, in consequence the bid is to make its structures work beyond shortsighted partisan programs and mere electoral motivations.


The end of Elinghtment's Politics

Briefly, the previous outline is a proposal for a rational State interventionism. But State would not be alone in this crusade; the participation of the whole society is necessary to transform itself. Civil society, mass media and regular people must be involved in this process. So, it is mandatory to establish a large information campaign, public actions and remarks on the benefits that such change will produce in the way we are. Otherwise, our society would be doomed to implode into a savage community like some contemporary Failed-States nations. And, of course, that is a destiny that would seal forever the possibilities of our society.

2 comentarios:

pelado1961 dijo...

Este artículo me resultó interesantísimo (aunque lo tuve que leer despacito, porque mi inglés no es brillante precisamente).
No va a faltar quien lo tache de "pesimista", sólo por el hecho de afirmar que el orden social tal como lo conocemos está destinado a desaparecer.
Pero a mí me parece realmente optimista, porque partís de la base de que se puede moldear el reemplazo en base a valores positivos.

Realmente, espero que así sea. Porque a veces creo que Baudrillard tenía razón, cuando postuló que llegaríamos al fin del siglo XX y comenzaríamos a borrar uno por uno los hitos históricos.

Va un abrazo, amigo.

Manuel Guillén dijo...

Muchas gracias, Pelado. Es correcto. Estamso ante un pendular entre la anomia y la imaginación. El gran reto de nuestra era (y en esto sigo a Immanuel Wallerstein) es imaginar las formas que constituirán el nuevo sistema social por emerger. Por supuesto, quienes detentan el poder están haciendo lo propio para preservarse cupularmente. Queda ahí planteda la cuestión.
Saludotes.