From verticality to horizontality. Reflections for an emancipating education

Abstract

The following essay pursues to concrete some aspects which are related with the education conceived as an emancipating labor. If this kind of education pursues the pupil's autonomy against some oppressive realities, one must point to certain kind of person and society. In order to shape this idea, two forms of being in the world and of human relationships are compared. The first one is called "verticality" and implies the social stratification with a psychic dynamics which tends to create hierarchies among persons, according with interiorized scales through the reproductive education. Its alienating and oppressing power is outlined. This conception is confronted with other perspective, called "horizontality", for this suppose a new and respectful way to understand the relations with others. The prosecution of this openness to the others, assumed by the individual and the social structures, would be the aim of every education that pretends to be emancipating, because only from this perspective the creation of autonomous individuals would be favored.

Realidad: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades No. 107, 2006: 39-64