LA CRISIS DE LA EDUCACIÓN Y EL CULTIVO DE LA HUMANIDAD

Abstract

In the latest decades, we have witnessed a rushed expansion of education coverage that fulfills a basic requirement of modern democracy. This dynamic has allowed the access of students from very different social and cultural backgrounds to the educational system, which is certainly a step forward, but it hasn´t come together with the necessary actions to ensure quality in a context where differences of interest and knowledge are so remarkable. The new information and communication technologies have changed work and social practices and have had a significant impact on youth cultures. We attend to a huge cultural transformation. Written text loses its hegemony as a source of knowledge and the image appears as a new dominant repository of knowledge and experience. Moreover, government policies are increasingly oriented towards work and production as it is expected that primary and secondary school as colleges and universities offer an education to satisfy the needs of the economic dynamics. There is talk of education for life, but there is offered an education for work. Under these conditions, self-care, care for others, care for the planet, reflection as critic thought, use of arguments and education of sensibility through art, that is to say, cultivation of humanity, cultivation of that what prepares us to live together, declines to the culture dynamics and the weakening of the academy. This text expresses the need to ask again for what is relevant and necessary in education, exposes some of its current problems and suggests more attention of, and care to, what is human, as a requirement and as a possible solution to education current crisis.