Education as a political phenomenon develops in a historical context, which assumes a long-term project, as a philosophical stance defined by a consensus among its different social actors. The lack of this consensus, replaced by authoritarian expressions, out of touch with reality, improvised and dogmatic, has prevented the construction of a relevant, inclusive and successful management model.
Positions conceived from economicism and mechanicism coexist with the excesses of quietist mysticism, without work, characteristic of hypercriticism, a good subject for reflection on another occasion; some pragmatic and others ethereal in forms of intellectualistic vanity, empty of humanity and realism.
The educational task transcends the school and its cultural challenge is aimed at building a sustainable, comprehensive change, developed by the entire political community, which transforms the model in the opposite direction to what characterizes us today, since there is no need to characterize the situation we live in, in gloomy, desolate, silenced, emptied of content, routine, opaque and conformist spaces, in that aesthetic of hopelessness.
Conducting educational spaces requires going beyond, seeking in legal arguments the legal manifestation as a basis for this task, and in the training of those who lead the processes, to argue in actions the development of the principles of participation and co-responsibility. Participation supposes the conscious and solidary action in social processes, and co-responsibility assumes the consequences of such action in the personal, community and institutional dimension, this has to be the dynamism of educational managers, beyond administering or managing a school institution.
However, in the academic sphere, the relationship between management and administration was conceived in terms of tension due to the economicist, mechanistic and instrumental burden it came to have by seeing education in accounting and mercantile terms, when it is appropriate to be complementary, to assume administration in its operative sense and administration in its strategic scope. The fragmentary, fragmentary processes, tied to reticular logics must be overcome by the anthropological turn, focused on the full development and promotion of the human person that understands management in its political-social sense as a human, participative, communitarian, solidary, cooperative and co-responsible process, with a solid ethical-political foundation.
Management is a complex, socio-political, transversal-complementary, participative, solidary concept for the full realization of the person, a personalist conception from the anthropological point of view because it supposes the consideration of the concept of the human person, builder of his/her reality, in relation with other persons and in mutual recognition of the you, the self and the other, in communication and encounter, imbricated and involved through conscious and solidary participation, with assumed and shared responsibilities, forming a community of interests and purposes in shared projects, for educational transformation, and thus placing it at the service of society. All this in an innovative legal framework representative of the social dynamics so that the law is not a “dead letter”, but, on the contrary, a relevant and representative transforming instrument, to dignify the person in a context of common good, justice, solidarity and pluralism.
Education for democracy, mediated by management in an anthropological key, as a cultural matter, implies the development of the school and other educational institutions such as the family, the media, churches, community organizations, unions and political parties, which involve democratic behavior, in citizen participation and action.
We are obliged to fill ourselves with humanity from the conception of the human person in the spheres of culture, community and in its axiological sense. The person is fulfilling and transcendent. The biblical sentence, “by their fruits you will know them” (Mt. 7:16), manifests the need to offer testimony. Let us heed the call and cultivate in a fertile field the possibility of building a democratic society with full respect for human dignity, the primacy of the common good, solidarity and social justice.
Dr. Freddy Millán Borges
Teacher
