POLITICAL EDUCATION

Isabelino Siede

The author, the editors of this book point out, aims to analyze the foundations and the
purposes of ethical and civic education, understood as a curricular expression of
the responsibility of the school in the political education of students. This implies,
among other issues, readdress the relationship between the educational system and the
social context, exploring the responses built prior to modernity and that
they contributed to shaping and directing the institutional frameworks.

I have been working on the topics discussed in this text for over a decade and they are still open.
for me many questions that arose in my early years as a teacher of
school. I value questions because they usually bridge the process of knowing
and the thinking one. In this case, they gave me a territory of problems and invited me to
explore the responses of other authors, the experiences of educators, the concerns
and the open rehearsals in schools.
Without questions, knowledge becomes bland and loses its course or well
It crystallizes and solidifies. Perhaps that explains the persistence of representations in the classrooms.
rigid in times of liquidity. Some ideas that enter the school environment have a
very prolonged circulation and persist in the discourses and in the practices, detached from
the theoretical frameworks on which they were initially based. In this way, they endure
old beliefs and their criticisms, which are also becoming covered in mold, persist phrases
epigrammatic remarks about what education is and should be, although they can no longer account for what
what happens in the classrooms and what happens to our bodies. Thinking about the political education of
Our time is an invitation to reassess those beliefs to either revive their relevance or let go.
that they continue their dissolution process.
Every educational gesture is an intervention in the world, understood as the artifice.
human beings who are building successive generations. Political education concerns,
more specifically, to the pedagogical practices through which a society provides
to the new generations of tools to act in the world, to transform it and
to become him. These practices have different meanings, modalities, and contents
according to the times and the social actors that propose them. If each society has
the need to build, in its members, relevant dispositions and attitudes for their
government, in this case we are interested in tackling the question of the existing political education
and necessary in current Argentine society: what for and how to educate students in
the exercise of power?
 Institutional devices are a key tool in the training of
students in the rule of law. What criteria can we use to think about the norms and the
daily functioning of the school so that they guide students in the exercise of
citizenship?
One of the issues that initially and recurrently concerns any educator
it is the relationship between your task and the social context, that is, the possibility that the self
action contributes, at least in part, to improving society. It is common for many of
those who start in teaching have more or less explicit expectations, more or
less clear, had they chosen a profession that would allow them to improve the world. The
the content and the direction of the transformation that is expected to be achieved vary significantly
between generations or between representatives of the same generation. What holds greater
permanence is the initial optimism.
Numerous objections of naivety or arrogance can be raised against a
such an altruistic aspiration, but it is also interesting to observe the political character of this
idea. It may be a very vague politicization, though clearly established in a
a person who tells himself, 'I don't like this world and I can do something about it'
change it.” That “something” we hope to do in teaching, educating, guiding girls and boys
toward a better path, etc.
Not forgetting that school is a tool for legitimizing the social order
in force, we can consider that it is also the area where that social order lends itself to
to be discussed, recreated, and reoriented. Guttman proposes the concept of 'reproduction'
social consciousness" to account for the process by which a society subjects
deliberation of its own foundations of support in educational action, inviting to
children join the company of building society: 'In a democratic society the
political education (the cultivation of virtues, knowledge, and skills
necessary for political participation) does have moral primacy over other objectives of
public education. Political education prepares citizens to participate in
conscious reproduction of its society, and conscious social reproduction is the
ideal not only of democratic education, but also of democratic politics.
Ultimately, political education is the point where a society defines how democratic it is.
is how one conceives democracy, as it establishes what game we invite to play to the...
new generations.
One of the ideas that persists in the purposes, in the billboards, and in the speeches
officials is the relationship between school and citizenship or, more specifically, the conviction
that the school must foster citizens. This persistence of a global statement
it can overshadow the considerable variety of meanings that have been assigned to it
training, arising from the very beginning of the formal educational system and even before,
when public education was little more than a chimera and a project. Why and for what purpose
Should citizens be educated? To interpret current educational practices.
politics and take a position on them, we need to take a brief tour of the
representations that guided their first steps, which allows us to detect in what
measure and in what way they continue to be relevant in our current practices.
Among the expressions that are currently held in highest regard in schools are the
values, ethics and citizenship, in contrast to terms like morality and politics, which have
fewer chances of appearing on billboards or being mentioned praise-worthy in
speeches of school events. However, these are categories that traverse a
shared field of issues, where they relate and interweave much more than what
It can be inferred from that distribution of likes and dislikes.
Our first problem is to discuss from the classroom the conditions of equality that
they lead us to consider ourselves citizens. It is a countercultural task in the context
of an expelling society, but there is no possible democracy if we do not reestablish the bond
social in an inclusive equality. The school cannot change the social order in which it is
it inscribes, but it can contribute to generating changes in perspectives, starting with the
own view of the teacher. When a boy is excluded, abandoned, or mistreated
find in the school a teacher who sees in him a worthy subject, who believes in his
possibilities of change and growth, which offers tools to think about oneself and to think
the world, which opens opportunities for him to learn to exercise his own power, we ascend
the first step on the path to inclusion.
The primary responsibility of the school in the political education of students
is to guarantee the continuity of social life, that is, to include children and young people in the
common guidelines for coexistence. However, this does not mean that the school advocates
for the continuity of the current institutions as they have taken shape
through history. An education that aspires to be emancipatory will try to recreate
critically in the classroom the normative foundations of social life, that is, the
criteria and principles that support the norms in a political community that seeks
be just. We can call this the normative dimension of ethical and political formation.
which addresses issues related to a dignified life, addressing the foundation of
rights and responsibilities of social life in order to form morally responsible individuals
self-employed individuals, who can account for their actions and argue about equality in the
coexistence.
Assuming a responsibility means reading the conditions of the context and taking
position in them. In my view, in the horizon in which we develop the practices
educational, the challenge of incorporating three basic virtues of citizenship is posed
(criticality, creativity, and commitment), as 'virtues' of a role that tends to
to dissolve ourselves into various and frequently contradictory mandates. With the intention of
position ourselves with political subjects:
Teachers need to developcriticality, to open the gaze to a world
complex and changing social situation, generally difficult to understand, where it is not easy
distinguish the place each one occupies and what the implications of the discourses are
who cross us and constitute us, for critical educators are those who can analyze
the problems and challenges of the present.
Teachers need to grow increativity, to find answers
suitable for old and new problems, to which previous responses
are insufficient to formulate new explanatory categories and develop
new collective projects, as creative teachers always show themselves
interested in finding new joints and rethinking the questions from
unexplored places so far.
The teachers are summoned to show ourcommitment, for
to engage ourselves in the renewal of a society that has stopped believing in itself, Islam, to
to ensure that the powerful, the interested, and the foolish do not hinder the dignified life of the
Furthermore, they should not degrade their pursuit of happiness. In committed educators, one can see the
will to act in accordance with what we think and desire individually
collectively.

_____________________________
Political Education. Essays on Ethics and Citizenship in School; Isabelino Siede, Paidós
Buenos Aires, 2007. 250 pages.

.GUIDE TO READING ANALYSIS OF THE ARTICLE:

To debate on Wednesday, August 22

1- In the third paragraph, Siede maintains the existence of 'times of liquidity'... what
What characteristics could that time refer to?

2- What 'old beliefs and their critiques' do you think persist in the school? Mention them.
some of the 'epic phrases' that persist and to which one could refer
author.

3- Why does the author state that EDUCATION is a POLITICAL fact?

4- Try to define and relate the following concepts to EDUCATION: exercise of

6- Why is it essential to consider the 'conditions of equality' provided from the

7- What would be an example of knowledge that the school teaches from its 'dimension'
regulation?

8- How can teachers be synthesized and characterized as political subjects?