Acta Scientiarum. Education
Print version ISSN 2178-5198On-line version ISSN 2178-5201
Abstract
DALBOSCO, Claudio Almir and NEITZEL, Odair. Education, school and the public sphere in Jürgen Oelkers. Acta Educ. [online]. 2022, vol.44, e64291. Epub Aug 10, 2022. ISSN 2178-5201. https://doi.org/10.4025/actascieduc.v44i1.64291.
The following text is divided into two parts, with the interview with Prof. Jürgen Oelkers, German pedagogue and professor emeritus at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, as its central nucleus. With the purpose of contextualizing the reader, the first part unveils a summarized panoramic view of the world educational scenario, highlighting the authoritarian and obscurantist neoconservatism that constitutes a source of concern for culture, science, and education and, precisely for this reason, has become the object of critical educational research. It also seeks to briefly insert Oelkers' pedagogical thought in this context. The second part presents in detail the interview granted by the mentioned professor, showing the thematic core of his educational research, his permanent dialogue with classical authors such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Dewey, and his firm defense in favor of the role of public education in the democratic strengthening of the public sphere. By reactualizing the close nexus between education and democracy thought by John Dewey in the last century, seeking to pour it against dogmatic and authoritarian forms of education and politics, Jürgen Oelkers offers important conceptual tools to think about the obscurantist authoritarianism that takes over the Brazilian political and educational scenario. Finally, the text as a whole makes it clear how indispensable the critical reconstruction of the democratic educational tradition is to the expanded cultural formation of the new generations.
Keywords : public education; democracy; public sphere; human formation.