Desafios a uma teoria da educação na pós-modernidade

Abstract

The metamorphosis currently under way in the contemporary world must necessarily lead to a re-examination of the theory of education based on new cultural and axiological references, different from those that, decades ago, characterised the theoretical thinking in this fi eld. The turn of the century and its concomitant utopian mythification have brought about a new wave of reflection about future alternatives and, naturally, about education which, as social praxis, reflects the representations of the future developed by the collective imagination. Thus, having agreed that the very structure and role of education have to be reformulated, it follows that such a change will require a reassessment of its normative status in our post-modern societies, as well as a review of some of the foundational principles of Pedagogy itself. Although a certain type of rationality runs the risk of becoming eroded within the established moral "polytheism", there are ways of recovering the essence of a educational "humanism" not yet extinct, which, without political militancy, is ruled by ethical values standing for the most genuine legacy of modernity’s illustrated nature.