Education and Venezuelan Society

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I'm a systemless thinker

2 years ago

I wrote this essay with the purpose of generating an approximation of the educational system in Venezuela. It is true that we can speak about a global conception of education because the world in which we live and the old barriers have been forgotten in the face of the globalized world, although this would remain only a vision or theory of education. Pointing out what really circumscribes us in a geographic-political way, or in other words "the Venezuelan culture" has particularities that make it different and determine it, so that certain aspects of the educational system can be approached, being able to identify the limits and parameters of such system.

Source: Pixabay.com

Now, in Venezuela it is said that education must be democratic. This statement is somewhat ambiguous, since as a principle we can handle that all education must be neutral to the political orientation of a state. But at the same time it is affirmed that Venezuelan education is democratic, and this orientation, if it is so, already includes a political tendency, since it is a democratic sign.

According to Dewey, the idea of an educational or pedagogical doctrine is that it has the task of socializing the child, this comes to represent the school as a form of community life and education as a social process. This pedagogical doctrine is known as Dewey's "Pedagogical Creed". However, education, rather than a mere preparation for later life, must be a process of living. Another aspect which has influenced Dewey is that the educational institution has been losing its individualistic character of competition, in order to become a community where work unifies and unites. "Common effort creates bonds. On the one hand, this is productive for the child or young person who learns, because he creates links with his peers, with his teachers. And he understands that his effort has the same value as that of his classmates. Thus establishing values of solidarity for an integrated social life. On the other hand, this method makes that the character of competition, which is not a negative value at all, is losing importance. Since all competition generates quality in the projects that are proposed.

"The school will not be able to provide preparation for social life unless it reproduces within itself the conditions that characterize social life. The only way to prepare for social life is through participation in social life." This quote from Dewey summarizes in some way what has been exposed, and proposes a new section in this work.

Dewey highlights the importance of praxis; it is within social life that man becomes a social being. And quoting J. Locke "All men are born equal and with equal aptitudes, only education makes the differences" In the Venezuelan education throughout its national historical process has not been far away, so to speak, from the educational vanguards, although in the last decades, the educational process has been somehow degrading. It is important to emphasize that Dewey's system has been copied, although like any other project, if it is imposed as absolute, it will break down. Since it is utopian to think that whatever the social or educational approach that is not subjected to criticism or interpretative values from other positions, values cannot be integrated to the circumstances to which they are subjected. That is to say, education as a project should be seen as a rhetorical science, not as a mathematical-logical science. All educational systems maintain the same values, only that societies change and must adapt. For example, for a long time it has been maintained the position that the teacher is the connoisseur and must pass on his knowledge to his students. Now, it is not quite seen that way. It is the teacher, together with the students, who builds the knowledge. They are a team in which knowledge is given as production. And not as an inheritance.

Throughout history, many conceptions of man and nature have been handled and all of them have had their repercussion in the educational and pedagogical field. And it is pedagogy that has a project of man and society. Now, it is valid to ask what is the relationship between pedagogy and society? It is important to highlight the four answers proposed in the text:

1. The educational system is an entity independent of the social system.

2. The social system is a product of the educational system.

3. The educational system is determined by the social system.

4. The educational system and the social system are different but structurally independent.

It is important to evaluate and consider each of the answers separately, but since we are dealing with Venezuelan education, we should point out which of them has been adopted by the Venezuelan system, although, perhaps it has not been chosen voluntarily, but rather, it has been established by a will, as a kind of major force that has been implanted in the system. And it is somehow current to say that it is the third response that we can appreciate today in the Venezuelan model of education. It is the educational system influenced by the social and even political system of the country, in order to provide an education that in some cases is even partisan. Knowing that education is "democratic" as expressed at the beginning of this essay.

By way of conclusion, it is essential to point out, remembering Darwin in his famous theory, how he establishes that there is no essential difference between man and animals since we are basically governed by the same rules. The difference that exists is a difference of degrees. And it has been enough to create everything we call culture, thanks to language as the greatest achievement of mankind. That is to say, we are an animal of signs, and thanks to existentialism as a philosophical current we have rescued the value of freedom in the search of being authentic, that must be the task of all pedagogy. To look for the man to be a free and authentic man. That he can think for himself, rescuing the crucial value of the Enlightenment movement of the eighteenth century. And in the words of Kant. Education is the only means by which man can become man, that mankind can come of age, must be the purpose of all pedagogy.