Ideas and Proposals for the Spanish Education System in a Post-Capitalist Era

The process of teaching and learning is not merely a question of transmitting a received cultural legacy but also of its transformation. Education is inseparable from life and from any socio-political model we wish to build and defend. This implies the impossibility of separating education from politics. Hence we must attempt to provide future generations with the skills and knowledge they need to enhance both their ability to question what they have inherited and also to enable them to actively take on their responsibility for the world as active as committed individuals. In this way, they will be empowered to reconfigure the world by constructing new, worthier and equitable ways of thinking. Focusing on the experience in Spain, this paper considers how critical education can function as a pedagogy of resistance against neo-liberal doctrines. In addition this article will put forward alternatives that would enable a rethinking of the Spanish public school system in the mold of critical education. Key to our proposal is the concept of education as a right that must be guaranteed for all. In our vision, education would be genuinely comprehensive and committed to equality and social justice; it would strive towards the ideal of a public school system that is democratic, inclusive, and non-religious. In this way, pupils would obtain an education designed to prepare them to be citizens of an intercultural world committed to feminism, and anti-neo-liberal and post-capitalist views.