A educação na contemporaneidade: Entre a emancipação e o retrocesso

Abstract

The project of modernity raised the expectation of education’s liberating power, following the logic of civilization progress. In this project, school’s achievements may liberate the individual from obscurantism and ignorance, as well as from alienating political powers. This article discusses the pair ‘emancipation-retrogression’ in the contemporary educational discourse. It also questions the meaning of the claim that education is still able to emancipate. The argument present in this article starts from a critical perspective of emancipation; proceeds with the analysis of the danger of retrogression in the frame of post-modernity, and under the sign of hope, raises questions and critical reflections, concluding that the pair ‘emancipation-retrogression’ expresses a time of change in the reconfiguration of the pair ‘emancipation-alienation’ within an evolutionary perspective.