Contributions of the Frankfurt School and Edgar Morin to Promote Dialectical and Complex Thinking in Education

Abstract

The aim of this text is to present an educational proposal that challenges the way adolescents in school think, and, consequently, how they relate to uncertainty, change, and otherness. To this end, the text starts from the formulation of a "method" –a key term in this work– based on the philosophies of the Frankfurt School and Edgar Morin, which can address the multidimensionality and multireferentiality of reality: dialectical and complex thinking. It is believed that only such a way of thinking, one that turns the individual into a strategist, will produce citizens capable of taking responsibility for their democracies. The connection between education and politics is clarified, with the first positioned as the foundation and engine of the latter. The educational proposal for forming complex citizens is then described, which is based on the recovery of a profound culture capable of deepening adolescents’ thinking and distancing them from simplistic and totalizing discourses. Finally, it is concluded that the only way to avoid new barbarities, such as Auschwitz –both as an extermination camp and, more importantly, as a metaphor for the place knowledge can lead without an educated thought to guide it– is to promote an education for complexity, understanding, and freedom.