Notes on conservatism and neoconservatism in venezuelan education

Abstract

Addressing the influence of a certain current of thought in a field such as education is a complex task. This effort becomes more complex when the focus is broadened and the intersection of ideas, approaches and practices that forges to make sense of a praxis that occupies an important and vast historical period is discovered. Even more so if this purpose is conditioned by the limitations of an essay on a specific reality, in this case like the Venezuelan one. This warning is not a minor matter, if one delves into the conservative imprint of the pedagogical conceptions that prevailed in the shaping of the Venezuelan educational ethos in the course of its history. Now, this brief and quick reference incorporates into the analysis its "antithesis", political and economic liberalism. Not only because of the alleged dialectic that they maintain in principle, but because the historical configuration of this political praxis in the country is based on the situational transit of power groups from one or another ideological perspective. Therefore, given the warnings in the case, this paper set out to make a tight reflection on some significant aspects that reveal the historical dispute within national education, to impress the sense that favored the interests of the sectors in conflict. Sideways, it allowed to prefigure political, social, economic and cultural aspects that governed every moment traveled until today, glimpsing features of neo-conservatism in vogue today.