1. The search for new mental territories
In the effective search for elements that contribute to the development of values education, many teachers and trainers have raised the need to previously make a great effort to examine today's society. A small catharsis undoubtedly necessary to cement the enormous and exciting work in which more and more people are immersed.
It is about knowing the reality from which we start through a general analysis of the causes and origins of the problems and a follow-up that allows us to understand how modern societies have reached this situation of promoting certain counter-values and allowing the loss of connection of the individual with their environmental environment breaking the ancestral solidarity and survival pact that allows us to survive as a species. This prior knowledge is essential before launching into promoting the values that development education fosters in the new (and not so new) generations.
Knowing the trajectory, contradictions and evolution of the System is a pedagogical and practical way of guiding education in values towards new mental territories of critical thinking, solidarity action and the search for social justice. The great challenge lies in how to position the concept of being in a prominent place in people's lives to replace current having, and to do so out of their own conviction and with the ability to transmit it to others as a beneficial way of facing life. in society. Development Education is a novel and honest way to contribute.
2. From social reality to social perception.
The reality from which we start is that to paraphrase Kant: "We do not see the world as it is, we see it as we are." It is true that we are always far from embracing the essence of truth and that ideological bias often tarnishes our reality glasses, but that should not be a reason to renounce the search for truth and the moral obligation to know what is there. true in every action that we analyze, in every activity that we promote. Considering the truth as something unattainable or undesirable is one of the great official lies that are managing to position itself in the collective imagination of citizens.
In general we think and act based on social perceptions rather than through social realities and what we perceive today as individuals and as a community has to do with diffuse, superficial interpersonal relationships based on mere economy, interest, ability of consumption and the survival of the personal self.
One of the countervailing elements that causes the most harm and slows down people's mental development towards new solidarity ways of understanding the world is precisely the strong psychologization * of people in today's society with the elevation of individual effort, success fast, the notoriety, the obsession with the image and personal growth as an end in itself and the primacy of the inner world of the individual.
All this prevails in the social and media agenda in the face of discredit and the little value that is given in our society to the success of the community, to the common effort, cooperation instead of competition, in short, the little that cohesion is advertised social as an attribute of a more equitable and well-articulated society.
The collective simply does not sell. The common good has nothing to do with selfish benefit. Personal growth at the cost of vital coherence as a group.
3. The society under review. Values and counter values of the global world.
- We live in a society where urban and cosmopolitan values and interests prevail through topics and generalizations under the umbrella of Globalization. Cities, at least those that are part of the circuits most connected to the global market, are not only structurally unhealthy and ecologically unsustainable, but also constitute the most evident expression of the irrationality of the prevailing social model. We live in a society immersed in a serious environmental crisisof such depth that the prevailing Status Quo can only be managed by denying the evidence or prostituting its meaning. It is still a matter of the perpetuation of negative values or counter values as the Market Society does not direct its productive forces mainly towards the production of life (of human subjects, ecosystems and their reproduction), but rather towards production of objects (means of production). We live in a society that corrupts the concept of democracy and citizen participation while at the same time blurring and dividing power and the ability to make decisions towards pressure groups that are not related at all to the concerns of the people and even less to democracy. as majority government.We live in a society that rewards and enhances the apparent, visual, individual and relative. A society that is imbued with superficial, volatile and ephemeral social relationships where the gene of selfishness disguised as personal freedom nests. On the contrary, that same culture is silent before the collective, the slow, the well done, the essential and permanent, the human, the transcendent. The mass media themselves build, disseminate and impose hegemonic values, images and representations, and they do so against the current of renewal proposals that attempt to break the vicious circle implicit in the social system. We live in a society where freedom is advertised as the highest valueto achieve through personal development and success, when the reality is that it is about reducing freedom to the mere instrumental capacity to choose between products, consumption or lifestyles that are more visual and apparent than authentic. In no way is it a freedom that proposes or facilitates ground-breaking life options or with the true capacity to face collective problems from an angle far removed from the unique thinking that prevails in today's society.
4. Socialization, values and power relations.
A true education in values must have as a fundamental and priority axis not to blame, not to accuse or to look for a Manicheism that distinguishes good and bad. Ideologically, many are responsible (not guilty) for the current situation regarding the low rates of good living in the global world.
Aspects disseminated from Sociobiology close to determinism and theses such as that of the "selfish gene" have been used implicitly and sometimes explicitly in the explanations and justifications of systemic egoism that permeates our social institutions and by extension the centers of power and decision of the Globalization imposed. Undoubtedly, the values or counter-values that dominate the current western way of life are the result of a certain socialization of individuals through the implementation of a whole culture of the material and inconsequential: values, meanings, life experiences, interests and customs. that condition the behavior guidelines and mediatize the social action of the individual as a collectivity.
All of the above explains the difficulty in achieving a true citizen spirit and the intuition of a network that does not perpetuate, but does facilitate situations of injustice, lack of solidarity, poverty and social exclusion that affect millions of people both in the North and in the South, since the border no longer NS, now it's about exclusion / inclusion.
It has never been easier to connect globally and at the same time more difficult to cooperate in solidarity.
5. Individual and Society. Structure and freedom.
We said at the beginning of the article that knowing the trajectory, contradictions and evolution of the System is a pedagogical and practical way of guiding Education in Values towards new mental territories of critical thought, solidarity action and search for social justice.
From a sociological perspective, nothing is permanent and eternal in the rules of human interaction, social action is not fatally determined by society and institutions, we flee from all determinism and from a certain vision that the current state of affairs is unalterable from Inside, on the contrary, the individual in society is a powerful agent of change and has demonstrated on multiple occasions that free will is a variable to consider and an important asset of human behavior.
It is true that the social structure, the social system and the culture as a whole are a powerful magnet that influences attitudes and behaviors, creates patterns of conduct and guides values and beliefs of individuals when they interact socially, but it is no less true than everything The aforementioned social fabric is determined, influenced and mediated by processes of change and renewal of all kinds that emanate from the will of individuals to modify the prevailing status and cause the fall of dominant paradigms and their gradual replacement by other novel ones that bring about modifications. legislative, political, normative, religious, cultural and values.
conclusion
Development Education, an effective tool.
As a conclusion, I reaffirm what has been said, it is a description of global social reality made with great brushstrokes with no other pretension than to briefly illustrate the social dynamics on which the (disastrous) current state of affairs is based. Only an integral and prolonged educational action that manages to make visible a non-ethnocentric and alternative reality seems an effective instrument of change, and that tool is none other than Education for Development, Education in Values. It is a battle of ideas and as such education is the right instrument.
It is not just about evil or suicidal evil capitalists and financiers, corrupt politicians and inept citizens. The evolution towards the environmental and socioeconomic cliff to which we are heading has a solid base centered on a social structure whose first-order institutions are exhausted, without powerful ideas and where disaffection and delegitimization of state and supranational power grows, with a capitalism that He runs back and forth like a headless chicken, selling a future that no longer belongs to him and that few buy from him.
From this global truth of denatured society and bloated citizenship is where we must continue (without a doubt with many difficulties) through education, changing criteria and making solidarity, ecological and social justice values fashionable, and at the same time, the trainers, Teachers and anyone who wants to join must induce and instill in others the freedom of thought, the ability to analyze and criticize power as a way of approaching the truth and for the truth of the change that will only be possible when the System itself quietly and sneakily surrender to the evidence and accept it as inevitable. That is our objective, an objective that can be achieved through the powerful tool that Education for Values and Development means. Hopefully it is not too late.
«Communicate to learn and share»
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