Evaluación sobre las relaciones de poder, estado y educación

 

Evaluation about the relations of power, state and education

 

Juan Durán-Molina

Universidad Central  del  Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador

jduran@uce.edu.ec

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6586-1707

 

Fernando Rodríguez-Arboleda

Ipiamat2008@yahoo.es

https://orcid.org/0000-002-0041-4284

(Received on: 20/05/2018; Accepted on: 01/06/2018; Final version received on: 15/06/2018)

 

Suggested citation: Durán-Molina, J. y Rodríguez-Arboleda, F. (2019). Evaluation about the relations of power, state and education. Revista Cátedra, 2(1), 153-164.

 

Resumen

Las relaciones entre Poder, Estado y Educación, desentrañan los opuestos materialmente existentes y las consideraciones teóricas del contenido esencial de poder. Desde la vertiente dialéctica se explica las implicaciones de la existencia del poder en el aparato del estado que es un órgano de dominación. El control que tiene el poder sobre el estado y sobre la educación, que es poderosa herramienta para trasmitir la cultura dominante  en cada etapa  de la historia, consolida ese control. Esto explica que la educación es parte de una realidad compleja que está unida a procesos económicos, políticos, jurídicos de los que el estado es un moderno administrador de empresas y, pretende que la educación esté sometida a  las leyes del mercado. Por otra parte, pone en evidencia a la enajenación que sin ser exclusiva del capitalismo es el enemigo central de los humanos, ante lo cual se debe tomar conciencia hacia una resistencia crítica que permita consolidar  una  formación  independiente, autónoma y solidaria. Se trata de evaluar la relación entre poder, estado, educación y cuáles son las condiciones de la producción del saber en cuanto a qué se lo produce, la finalidad social de éste, en qué se lo utiliza y sobre todo quién lo controla. El objetivo es evaluar por qué hay una relación directa entre saber/poder como extensión de todo y la relación con las inequidades sociales de las cuales el estado es el garante incondicional. Para demostrar lo expuesto, el artículo de forma cronológica relaciona el estudio al estado liberal conservador


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que hace su aparición a principios del s. XX, posteriormente al estado desarrollista que surge desde los años sesenta del mismo siglo y durante la aplicación del modelo neoliberal.

 

Palabras Clave

Educación, estado desarrollista, estado liberal conservador, neoliberalismo, relación saber/poder.

 

Abstract

Relations among Power, State and Education uncover the existing opposite and theoretical considerations of the essential content of power from the  dialectical  aspect. The implications of the power existence in the State apparatus are explained, that  is  a  domination and control organ, which exerts the power and its capacity to handle the State and the education  as a transmission  tool of the  dominant  culture in every stage   of history. It is explained that education is part of a complex reality, linked to economic, political, legal processes, of which the State is a modern business administrator,  and it aims that education  is subjected to the market laws. On the other hand, it reveals the alienation that without  being exclusive of capitalism, is the central enemy of the human being, so awareness should be taken toward a critical resistance, which allows to consolidate an independent, autonomous and solidarity formation. It aims  to explain the relation  among  power, State  and education and the conditions of the knowledge production, as for what is produced, the social purpose, in what it is used, and above all, who controls it, as there is a direct relation  in knowledge/power, and as an extension, the relation with the social inequities,  in which  the State is the unconditional guarantor. This article relates the study of the liberal, conservative State in a chronological way, which appears at the beginning of the XX century, later to the developmental State which arises in the sixties of this century and during the application of the neoliberal model.

 

Keywords

Education, relation of knowledge/power, alienation, critical thinking, liberal conservative State, development, neo-liberalism

1.              Introduction

An old proverb says that teaching how to fish is better than providing the fish. Bishop Pedro Calsaldáliga, who lives in  the Amazon region says that it is a good idea, but what if someone buys the river, which belong to all, and forbids the resto to go fishing? or if the river gets poisoned, and it poisons its fish, for the toxic waste? I mean, what would happen if the current situation occurs?”

 

—Galeano, 2011, p. 334

Indeed, education is a complex reality linked to national and international economic, social and political processes, where the hegemonic presence of transnationals willing to be more capital and less world large is evidenced, especially in modern times.  This  reality  exists to the extent that natural resources are exhausted, the food and cultural sovereignty of each country is getting weaker with the time, supranational legal instruments are created; governments consciously and unconsciously become modern "business" managers and education is intended to be controlled by the law of the market.


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Education is a social phenomenon that ultimately depends on the whole of  social phenomena. The interest  of  some  modernist  and  postmodernist  philosophers  and educators is to watch over the material basis of capitalism, to leave it untouched, to divorce their social and cultural analyses of the study of the production mode. Thus, they would formulate solutions to the chaos of the present world only in the superstructural aspect, which explains that the relations of power in any of the levels and processes of the educational system do not detach from the social relations of production.

From the side of the "excluded", "the disposables", "leftovers" and "outraged", i.e., it is possible to make a critical and organized resistance. This, in educational terms, means building fervent friendships, maximizing intelligent company, encouraging critique with collective action in such a way that we are willing to use the aesthetics of defeats to say no to immobility, no to intellectual, moral and political domestication by the ladies  who  often try to enshrine their arrogance as acts of good faith and for our owngood.

The formation of human beings and higher professional level, which is linked to critical thinking, is based on education for freedom, so that it is a democratic challenge in this world homogenized by the market, making humans to  alienate  with  consumerism.  A  main principle of education is not only to form qualified professionals, but also  to  be  human beings who are protagonists of historical and social changes.

Specifically, it will reflect objectively, but at the same time in a critical way between knowledge, power and education, since it is considered that there are implications in the school practice, since the power given by the place that occupies in a creation process of the richness determines that the starting point is not the same for all children. The first form of social discrimination is given by the poor origin of a human being in economic terms, which is explained in the preceding paragraph; there is a second in relation to the cultural capital that will accumulate during the life and that guarantees to some people a  dignified  life,  stable work and better developed capacities. It also refers to school practices that are not isolated from the social processes of the context and that are a reflection of the power relations, and it justifies this work and one of the objectives that is related to the approach that states that the forms of culture and learning evaluated as valid are those accepted by those who hold power, and in turn determine what is true and what knowledge will be discriminated against in silence.

Therefore, investigating to find the true path through which education should  be carried must have a transformative value that justifies this effort, so that there is not only academic or epistemological interest in the sense of developing the theory or verify it in the praxis. In addition, there is the possibility of aiming at the objective of facing positions that convert education into a human act to humanize the social coexistence of solidarity, free egalitarian and equitable in all forms.

It could be understood from another perspective that the importance of executing this research has to do with the quality of education in general and  university  in  particular, which is accurate to the extent that it is determined by its response to the demand that is related to the dignified life that has been referred to. It is also justified because it is directed  to the lovers of the freedom, we follow the ideals of those who died by the reconquest of everything that is irreducible to the systems and the paralyzing bureaucracies.

Then, the study used qualified bibliography of the social sciences and a professional practice linked to the University Academy which, in addition has transcended the physical limits of the school, since it is understood that uniiversity is not enough to educate. In addition,


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professors must make the necessary theoretical reflections that underlie the practices that along with the theory evidence the spiral theory-practice.

The study constitutes an indissoluble encounter between the  educational  praxis  of  which the professors are first-line protagonists and the theory in social sciences. This explains the relationships of production that is not a theoretical anachronism, but it opens the possibility to access to critical content, ideologically committed, where neutrality is notpossible.

 

2.     Knowledge, power and education in the colonial times

One of the main issues in education related to the issue is the question of power, and this means to know:

·        Who controlsit?

·        How did you get to it?

·        What do you use it for?

·        What means are used?

·        What is its purpose?

From this point of view and historically considering the problem of education, it is observed that it has been used by the power to reproduce social inequities throughout the state. As Merani (1980) says, "What is not politically exhibited is simply hidden. Thus the power built in the way of the big mafias interrelates with the  antisocial”  (section  Presentation, paragraph X) since the power discriminates from the set of knowledge, those valid for their permanence and socialize and disseminate. As evidence of the above, in the colony, and until many years after the independence processes of Latin America, the university in particular and education in general was managed by the church. The name of the Christian God has  been permanently used as an alibi for the plundering of natural resources,  the expropriation  of lands and incompatible knowledge with their processes ofconquest.

In order to consolidate the fundamentals of the proposal of the present article and its objectives, the Ecuadorian historian Ayala (1994) states:

The entire political apparatus of the royal Audience of Quito which included the chapterand the church itself under thestate control. Indeed, thanks to a concession of the Pope, the Spanish sovereigns received the right called Patronage on the American Church" (p. 43).

The author relates the power, the control of knowledge and education. As known, the Catholic Church had the power over education and in turn, the church had control of the colonial state. Ayala continues (1994) "In this way we find the church firmly entrenched in the colonial State apparatus, exercising a virtual monopoly of the ideological dimension of society" (p 43). This makes it possible to affirm that the priests had the function not only of evangelizing the indigenous masses, process that  fulfilled it in  the  parishes  and  convents and the educational function of the colonizers with what Ayala (1994) continues saying "impose its Worldview of Christianity as an ideological horizon" (p. 43), in saying he  refers to the church as a human institution, not as an individual right to religiosity, and that develops political interests.

In Altoperú, as for the authority of the monarchical state at the University of Charcas during the colonial period, it was taught that the Jesuits as they are followers of St. Thomas Aquinas, taught their doctrine, which according to Vázquez (1983) "Arrived by Syllogisms according to which the authority of the State resides in God from whom it passes to the people, which


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in turn yields that authority to a person who is the head of the state, in this case the  monarch" (p. 165). This is the Spanish scholastic that in an artificial game of words reflects the reality of the relationship between power, those who possess knowledge and education.

On the other hand, that syllogism shows that in these power relations the intervention of people is recommended, which is a reflection of a democracy that is more fiction than reality. This shows the difference in the position of the French kings of the 17th and 18th centuries that consolidated absolutist authoritarianism when arguing that power comes directly from God to the King and education will reflect that reality.

What was taught? It is a key question to find know-power relationships, and then it is very clear to determine that initially were conquered towns that were not known by them, a activity conducted through armed violence, but as it was impossible to maintain an army of occupation in such a huge continent, it was necessary to seize the conscience of its inhabitants. The medium used and very effective is the culture, and specifically the diffusion mechanism which is the education. Native Indians were taught the catechism, sacred music along with agriculture and handicrafts to produce what the escutcheons  and  creoles required for their maintenance. They did not consider reading and writing necessary.

In the case of Ecuador, for 1767 the church not only owned about 109 farms in the Royal Audience of Quito-the Catholic Church also had the best weapon of control which are the various cultural expressions that have a strong social root, such as the celebrations and  forms of the social being of the time that accommodate cultural forms strange to the American world of those centuries, building a religious and cultural syncretism but that, building a religious and cultural syncretism but that, from this conjunction, the  native  culture loses its nature.

3.         The know, power and education relations in the Republican years

The history study of Republican Ecuador shows a social and economic becoming that begins in 1830, called by the popular wisdom as the last day of despotism and  first of the  same thing that makes relation with the maintenance of the Colonial exploitation forms and elitist education forms under the power of the church. The Republic for The Independent America of Spain did not mean any economic emancipation or anti-feudal struggle, it was only a political process in which the landowners and Creoles came out promising.

Within the artistic works, in Lima, Potosí and other cities, the theatre was  developed  that had a religious and historical character, written in Quechua and Aymara languages with the aim of evangelizing. Vázquez 1983) states:

The theatrical pieces were specially represented in Corpus Christi and in the nights of feast called Pagans or masquerades and in the  novena of  New Year or of some saint that they surrendered cult were made  comedies of sacred character (p. 179).

The colonial universities taught philosophy that was conceived as a servant  of  theology, since the objective is to justify the existence of God by rational means. In the royal audience of Quito there was the philosophizing of San Fulgencio, who also  taught  scholastic  and moral. Law faculties taught the laws of the Indies: real, civil and canonical laws, grammar  and Latin were taught. The medium-level free educational centers that were destined to educate the middle sectors of the population taught to read and write, catechism and sacred music, which shows that education is at the service of the temporal power of the church and the monarchy. Russell (2004) In this regard, indicates:


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Religion as their advocates often say is the source of our sense of social obligation. When a man did something that displeased the gods,  the  Divine punishment falls on everyone, hence this conduct was a matter of general interest... this implies that private vices provoked public  calamities (p. 128).

With these reflections related to the religion, the social and the education, it is shown that the knowledge accepted by the church and obligatory for the people is instrument of social control. When revising the literature related to the process of historical development of Ecuador, there are coincidences with other countries because it is a continent that lived similar realities, determined not only by the internal processes but also by the chain that binds  us to the north of the planet  in a sort  of unequally   justified relationship in the name  of the International Labor Division, that led our countries to join to the world capitalist system. In this process, education will be managed by the State which assumed in the social becoming forms of: conservative liberal state, developmental state and neoliberal state.

When societies subjugated by colonialism, Acosta and boxes (2015) affirm.

They became capitalists and could not base their  original  accumulation  at the expense of other weaker societies, and chose to focus on the local exploitation of their workforce. Thus, these societies became a "late capitalism" where the accumulation process was conditioned by its historical dependence on early capitalism "(p. 134).

These realities are of paramount importance to understand the processes  of  acculturation  and alienation not only of the product of labor that in capitalism is given through the surplus value, but also implies alienation of the consciousness of the reality itself by means of knowledge. This knowledge is transmitted from the school and the professors are often unconscious instrument of these processes, in addition to other practices and customs that detract from identity to people and are promoted from thenorth.

4.        Knowledge, power and education in the conservative liberal state

The prevalence occurred from 1880 and 1930 and is consolidated with the Liberal Revolution of 1895, but in spite of the bourgeois triumph, the landowners and the church retain the liberal triumph, a high economic, political and  ideological power, which  allows the name used. While the gradual extension  of public  and  free education to all social strata  is produced under the positivist criteria thought illustrated against the clerical, it fails to emancipate itself from its class character. For the Latin American  liberalism,  the  suppression of slavery was an easier achievement to solve  than  the  elimination  of indigenous servitude, a structural problem that along  with  the  interests  of  significant capital, generates marginalization, inequity and poverty  for  many sectors  and  indigenous and mestizo social strata. Moreover, for many years the teaching state does not have its own educational establishments, which are held by the landowners in many cases. Salaries for teachers are low, lack of specialized administrative personnel, as well as in school furniture and teaching materials.  The situation is  more complicated in rural  areas,  where the abuse  of the regional oligarchy slows down the advancement of culture and education.

The countries mistakenly  called as developing countries, have a proletariat  as  exploited  as at the beginning of the industrial revolution, but under conditions of backward agrarian societies, with a strong landowner  semi-feudal  class that   requires   little knowledge against a technology up to the fifties of the twentieth century. According to Merani (1980) power


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demanded only two things to educations "capacity for work, achieved  with  that rudimentary primary education, and submission to its ends, obtained by the rule of the law applying force and, above all, with the pressure of the hunger of the unemployed" (p.25).

With the developmental State (1945-1981) where an industrialization model for import substitution is shown, education is growing quantitatively. However, as analyzed in  the work of Rodríguez (2005) under the fundamentals resulting from the application of the two agrarian reforms, the most favored sectors are going to be precisely the middle classes not the popular sectors, since once separated from their means of production, many of these migrate towards the cities as a subproletariat full of necessities and problems dissatisfied. Thereafter, many countries of Latin America and particularly Ecuador, will cease to be a country eminently rural to become accelerated in an urban country (Rodríguez, 2005,  p.  45).

According to the sectors of power, the developmental model would allow to reach an economic, social and educational level in a short time equivalent to that of the rich countries, where some significant contradictions related to poverty would be resolved, the unemployment or inflation. However, the reality was different and the  disenchantment more. As Juan Cepeda says in the work of Jorge Núñez:

In a country where misery and backwardness coexist with the development  of capitalism, the  symptoms  of progress  seem  to manifest in the cities and practically reduce to the reality of Quito and Guayaquil........ 1.5% of the Ecuadorian population is made up of large agricultural, industrial, merchant, banker and financiers owners; 20% for the middle classes and 78.5% for the popular class comprised by artisans, drivers, small and rural intermediaries, proletariat, urban subproletariat and peasantry (Cepeda, 1992, p. 265).

However, the development as an economic and political model imposed from outside emphasizes the processes of export and investment, without bumping the problem of ownership and unfair distribution of wealth. The effects of  this model have been  observed  in the quality of education, and are felt with respect to school infrastructure, administrative bureaucracy, school dropout, illiteracy, school nutrition, educational research, pedagogical thinking and educational equity.

Tensions are running high or attenuate according to the problems of the  international  market, since it is decided on the part of many countries to entrust  their  destiny in the sale   of a single export product. In our case, if we do well with the sale of cocoa, then the banana and finally the oil, education can improve (feminization of school enrolment, creation of educational centers of initial education, access to children with special educational  needs), but when there is a crisis in the international sale, the situation is complicated. Even more when American imperialism with its international  development  agencies,  with  the diplomacy of the dollar and through the use of force manages to deform the national productive apparatus and places us in a situation of economic and social prostration that at the ideological and political level will deal with all the cunning to strengthen  the  dependence to which we weresubdued.

During the implementation of the Keynessian developmental model, illiteracy was lowered significantly with an extension of educational coverage, but this process failed to reconcile with the quality of education. Once returned democracy, the neoliberal state (1981 until today) will undress the egocentric nature of capitalism as a selfish  civilization  that  privatizes profits and socializes losses to such an extent, that again the structural problems


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of corruption, unemployment and poverty grow significantly "from 136 million of poor in Latin America in the year of 1970, to 300 million in 2002" (Saltos, 1999, p. 34). About "600 billion dollars is the cost of corruption in Latin America over the past 25  years,  equivalent  to its external debt" (Robles José, 2008, p. 141). In the case of Ecuador, the country has paid an external debt of around US $100 billion, which means that it has paid five times the debt that was 16 000 million in that year.

This means decapitalizing national economies, reason for which the aforementioned educational problems are intensifying, in addition to the attempts  to  privatize  public schools; human capital formation according to the market needs and not the needs of the popular sectors; curricular changes emphasizing the technical aspects rather than the humanistic ones; control of educational services under the business criterion that measures cost-benefit; it is evident that education works for the market and with the internal logic of the market, promoting the formation ofcompetencies.

Sepúlveda (2002) "From this economic reading, competition refers  to  ‘progress’ "fundamental instrument for achieving greater productivity and competitiveness" (p. 3). It warns that this is stimulated from the power because education becomes dependent on the decisions of a type of economy which leads the neoliberal model, this evidences what the work requires from the schools, that is the same what the power needs of the school.

Everything described causes processes of social injustice that, among  other  aspects, promotes the silent war between teachers for wage stimuli, among students for obtaining scholarships, and between the different educational levels by the absorption of public funds; academic offers of self-employment and micro-enterprises. The aim is to liberate the equivalent of easing State regulation systems for teachers' contracts, recognition of professional qualifications, validation of international studies and payment of salaries and destruction of trade unions teaching.

The ethics of competency-based training aims to make a concept that offers equal opportunities for liberalism in economic and legal terms is part  of its essence  and   axiom as it does not need to be proven, given the economic inequalities of individuals, what is easily demonstrated by statistics presented by OXFAM: (2018). "The richest 1% in Chile has  at  least 36% of that country's GDP, in Sweden the figures are that the  same  1% owns 9% of  the wealth. These data helps to understand what was quoted by Sepúlveda (2002) "The idea of equal opportunities for all citizens is a pious fiction; but if we analyze it in its material dimension, it becomes an unreal concept "(p. 17).

With all these facts, the educational task is denatured and in agreement  with  the globalization processes, fundamental aspects related to the educational financing are exacerbated the school-work relationship and the standards  of academic  excellence.  It  is not intended in any way to be unaware of the contextual, regional or global framework, education cannot be thought out of the demands of society and history which, in this last stage, has been strongly structured by the predominance of an economy position, depending on the power interests of the market.

With regard to educational funding, neoliberalism poses as a single  solution  the  privatization of education, hence education rather than being  a right  becomes a  privilege  for those who can afford it. With regard to the relationship between education and work, neoliberalism aims to form the "economic man" as labor or as a brain in the service of  capital. Finally, with respect to academic excellence, the amount is confused with quality, knowledge becomes a commodity, teachers and parents become clients, and the public school becomes a company, where the human factor is not taken into consideration.


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From this economic reading, progress is confused with competition that presumably gives higher productivity and competitiveness factors of backwardness and marginality for those who fail to adapt to the conditions of the scenario that mark the new social and economic relations. The demands of the work become an objective from early ages to develop skills supported by an unused development of technological applications that have become  like the panacea of those who believe in Education. This is a difficult mistake to combat as they do not understand that education is a phenomenon of social essence.

  What to do?

In a society where lie prevails, the truth is known as terrorism oil flows and the jungle bleeds

and where is justice crucified in the altars of capital Prostitutes will take the power, their children have failed the government of Sixto belongs to the weak gender (Graffiti taken from the streets of Quito, 2005).

Even though the story is not easy, the elements of the solution are found on it, in such a way that it is possible to build a pedagogy of resistance, without having to wait for everything to be well to start doing the job. This means:

·       To know the different modes of resistance throughout national and Latin American history to see how they have been disseminated in the past and how they can be developed in the future, mainly in their emancipatory aspect.

·       To connect the school with the active forces of society and the popular organizations to recover the relationship of the past with the present; the action with the conscience, the critique with the proposal made with the people, from the people and for the people.

·       To organize defense of public and free education at all levels, where democratic alternatives to traditional education must be increased. It is not possible that the children of the major contributors to the national treasury as they are workers, peasants and employees have minimal representation in the university classrooms.

·       To bear in mind that the school  cannot change itself  the society,  nor is it almighty, as a result, there must be a relationship with the active forces of society that not only consume but produce, that is not only passive but critically questions a set of information, symbols, norms and impositions.

·       Llevar a efecto políticas compensatorias de educación como parte de políticas generales de reinserción laboral, cultural, y social de los ciudadanos que  han  obtenido menos oportunidades, de tal forma que desmonte mecanismos de discriminación que existen a lo largo de todo el sistema educativo. Es importante establecer conexiones orgánicas con aquellas mayorías excluidas que habitan los barrios, pueblos, comunidades y ciudades en los que se localizan las escuelas, para mediante su involucramiento volverlos sujetos políticos de su transformación y no simplemente objetos de las políticas oficiales. Con mayor razón, si a pretexto de la objetividad de los test de inteligencia, no se permitió a negros,  indígenas,  migrantes es decir pobres, ingresar al mejor establecimiento educativo de muchos países latinoamericanos.

·       To carry out compensatory education policies as part of general policies of labor, cultural and social reintegration of citizens who have had less opportunities, in such  a way that they dismantle discrimination mechanisms that exist  throughout  the entire education system. It is important to establish organic connections with the excluded majority that inhabit the neighborhoods, towns, communities and cities in


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which the schools are located, to become political subjects of their transformation and not simply objects of official policies through their involvement. Even more the rejection to enter the best educational establishment in many Latin American countries of indigenous people, migrants, i.e. poor people with the pretext of the intelligence tests.

·       To understand that the main problems of education are not methodological but fundamentally political. From educational policies and from a position with respect to the world, teachers assume positions of struggle for and againstsomething.

·       Education as an awareness process of the oppressed, depending on the subjective conditions for social transformation are broadened. For these purposes, it is not enough to know how to read and write, it is essential to know  how to  understand the reality to return to it after having raised its education transformation.

·       To rethink the role of the State in education,  the problem  of knowledge, the notion  of power, democracy and citizenship. Because it is not appropriate to delegate the public affairs to certain representatives who change their T-shirt without the corresponding mental hygiene, especially when the power hides more  than  it  reveals, and is able to direct the public attention to the relations of the man with the nature or psychological aspects related to concepts of "personal fulfillment"; "be well", and "self-realization". It is essential to know all about the structural and ideological forces that restrict our lives.

·       Relation of the school with the popular culture, because the walls of the classroom can no longer protect children and adolescents from the influences of the trans- nationalized culture, i.e., of the dominant culture that mechanizes the reason and forces the human being to accept its rules as a destination. Paraphrasing Freire (1990) not having a voice means to be impotent in such a way that it is essential to give people and to the future generations the possibility of  producing,  reinventing and creating ideological and cultural tools to break into the myths  and  structures  that infuses the mistaken idea that the "weak" were born to obey the "strong"  (Freire, 1990, p. 20).

 

5.         Conclusions

To conclude, when people are born we have made an essential pact with life, but when we decide to be professors our pact is with the country, so that the contradiction that does not give truce if we want to achieve the development, which is not the same  as growth, implies  a dispute over education and citizenship. Educating is a task that engages social movements, artists, teachers, intellectuals, political parties that oppose the  neoliberal  model  and  workers' unions that have carried in many parts of the world the weight of confrontation against Neoliberalism and its servants.

Everything is telling us that the transfer of the training of teenagers, young people and university professionals to the competency model induces the idea of consolidating a curriculum that tends to replace citizenship, solidarity and equality for the competitiveness, productivity, growth and non-development. To humanize, there is no need to walk the shortcuts that make you lose your way.

It has already been said, dominant culture of a society is the culture of  the dominant  class  of that society. Perhaps this is not an ancient conclusion that is well known by some, but is forgotten by others, because true knowledge that does not serve the class in power is silenced. The school being a means that society needs to derive the culture to the young generations, only conducts the valuable knowledge for the power.


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Freire, P. (1990) La naturaleza política de la educación. Cultura, poder y educación.

Barcelona- Buenos Aires- México. Ediciones Páidos.

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Núñez, J. (1992). Nación, Estado y Conciencia Nacional. Editorial Nacional. Quito-Ecuador. Merani L. Alberto (1980). Educación y Relaciones de Poder. Editorial Grijalbo, S. A. México

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Authors

JUAN DURÁN-MOLINA obtained his degrees in Education sciences, professor of secondary education, specialization in educational psychology, and has a specialty in  quality management in education at Universidad Central del Ecuador, Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Education Sciences, career of Educational Psychology. He obtained his master's degree  in Educational Innovations at Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar –Quito.

He is currently a professor of the career of Psychopedagogy of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Education Sciences of Universidad Central del Ecuador. He is a coordinator of  the Commission of Educational Innovations of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Education Sciences. He is the trainer of the Institute of Academic  Development  of Universidad Central del Ecuador. He is a collaborator in projects of curricular reform of the Universidad Técnica de Cotopaxi and Universidad Técnica del Norte. His main published works are: Philosophy of Education; Psychology of the Child Development; Psychology of Learning,; Learning Theories and Pedagogical Models; History of Education in Ecuador and Latin America; Sociology of Education; Madame Democracy; Principles of Learning;  Stick and Carrot; Learn to Educate 1; Learn to Educate 2; Critics of the Unified Baccalaureate; Critics to the Aptitude Tests of the the Ministry of Education; History of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Education Sciences; Educational Proposal of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Education Science; and Child activity and Development. Published articles: Intercultural Education; University and Power; Neoliberalism and Education,  and  its effects on education; Power is impunity and the graffiti uprising; An emancipatory education.

FERNANDO RODRÍGUEZ-ARBOLEDA obtained his title as a teacher in the normal school Cardenal de la Torre in Quito in 1969. In 1975he holds the academic degree of Bachelor of Science in Education, specialization in History and Geography in the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Education Sciences at Universidad Central del Ecuador. In 2005 he obtained the academic degree of MSc. in education, specialization in History of Ecuador.

He is currently retired and lecturer at National Union of Educators and Postgraduate facilitator of the Faculty of Philosophy at Universidad Central del Ecuador and Universidad Estatal de Guayaquil. Among the most outstanding roles, he was the director of  the University Institute  of ISPU Pedagogy. He was vice-rector of the National Mejía High Shool  in Quito. He was director of the University Careers of Commerce and Administration of the Social Sciences belonging to the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Education Sciences of Universidad Central del Ecuador. He is the author and coauthor of Books for university teaching of Philosophy of Education and Epistemology. His main topics of research are related to the components of the social conscience of the university students and  the  relation of the initial formation of the social workers and their professional practice.