PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION AS A REFLECTION ON THE MEANING AND AIMS OF THE EDUCATIONAL ACT
Keywords:
Critical Formation, Public Policy, Educational Epistemology, Teaching Work, Digital SocietyAbstract
This research begins from the recognition that understanding the meaning and purposes of the educational act is essential for addressing the contemporary crisis of schooling. It asks how Philosophy of Education contributes to this understanding and analyzes, in light of different philosophical traditions, the foundations that sustain education as an ethical, rational, historical, and humanizing practice. Methodologically, it is a qualitative and bibliographical investigation that undertakes analytical reading and critical interpretation of philosophical and pedagogical works, articulating fundamental concepts to examine today’s educational challenges. The analysis is organized into three axes: (a) philosophical foundations of education, which reveal how different conceptions of human beings and society shape the aims of formation; (b) tensions within contemporary schooling, marked by commodification, teacher precarization, social inequalities, school violence, curriculum standardization, and the impacts of digital culture; and (c) the mediating role of Philosophy of Education, which offers ethical and political criteria to resist technocratic models and to reconstruct the public and emancipatory meaning of schooling. The study concludes that recovering the meaning of the educational act requires recognizing that the crisis of the school also results from the historical absence of State policies, replaced by fragmented governmental actions that undermine the material conditions of teaching and weaken the public function of education. Reaffirming the humanizing, critical, and democratic character of education implies resisting mercantile logic and repositioning the school as a space for integral formation, autonomy, and social justice—an indispensable condition for transforming contemporary society.
