The Emancipatory Potential of Education: A Critical Tradition in the Philosophy Education

Abstract

The article attempts to reconstruct the critical tradition in the philosophy of edu­cation on the basis of a review of studies in which education is analyzed from the critical perspective, addressing such issues as deformation of the meanings of education, dehumanization of educational relations, legitimization inequality by means of education. This tradition is described in the article around the issue of the emancipatory potential of education as the conditions for the formation of independent mature thinking, the development of subjectivity and autonomy of the individual. The key directions of the development of critical reflection on education are outlined. Different projects of emancipatory education related to the movement of critical pedagogy are analyzed and compared. A special em­phasis is placed on the crucial for a critical tradition problems: the problem of in­strumentalism in education and the problem of achieving equality and overcom­ing hidden mechanisms of power in the educational relations. The article concludes with demonstrating the relevance of the critical tradition in the analy­sis of education for understanding modern trends in education associated with the dominance of neoliberal logic in assessing its effectiveness.