The education concept and its false dichotomies

Abstract

Introduction: The conceptual complexity inherent in the term "education" has been associated with numerous analyses from various disciplinary approaches, paradigms, and theoretical currents. Objective: This article aims not to offer a univocal definition of the meaning of education but to consider it from a sociological perspective that integrates the false dichotomies of individual/society, continuity/discontinuity, and reproduction/change. Development: In the first part, the text presents a theoretical proposal on the articulation between culture, identity, and memory. Culture is understood as the set of objectified and subjectivized forms in historically specific contexts, which provides the individual with intersubjective elements for identity formation, where memory acts as an active dialogue between the psycho-individual and the socio-collective dimension. In the second part, education is proposed as a complex and dynamic process of cultural communication, identity formation, and social construction of memory. It emphasizes the importance of analyzing education from a theoretical perspective that considers the interaction between the individual and society, offering the possibility to understand its crucial role in processes of social reproduction and continuity, as well as in those of change and discontinuity. Conclusions: The mentioned false dichotomies in approaches to studying education polarize and create an antagonism between structures and subjects, individual and society, and reproduction and social change, consequently providing little understanding of how these phenomena articulate with educational processes, overlooking the multiple possibilities of co-participation and mutual determination.