Time, power and education: rethinking the construction of personal identity and educational policy decisions.

Abstract

Social conditions of current life do not exactly constitute an ideal framework for the serene implementation of a balanced temporal perspective in the educational system. The article tries to contribute to: 1) substantiating the anthropological value of time, showing the decisive character that, in the current circumstances of accelerated change, the time domain has in the configuration of personal identity;

2) with a more applied nature and awareness of the interaction between time, power, and educational action, rethinking the meaning and scope of today's educational policy decisions.

Methodologically, we adopt a hermeneutical approach in which we critically analyze the temporal perspective as a coordinate of personal and social experience, as well as the predominant patterns that explain and justify the connections between time, power, and education.

We show how, within our individual possibilities, the balanced organization of time contributes to achieving a successful personal identity, strengthening the ethical impetus of the educational task and transforming our lifestyle. However, the encounters and disagreements between time and education also depend on the horizons of meaning that we adopt at the collective level, which leads to power being seen as an explanatory variable.

Rethinking time and education leads us to reconsider educational policy decisions, in which we simultaneously notice obstacles and innovative possibilities. The change in individual and collective lifestyles, linked to a balanced temporal orientation, is associated with complex interactive and not merely unidirectional socio-cultural dynamics.