Reflections: Educate with knowledge in an edifying key
Authors: Arboleda Julio César 
Published: February 2024

In this reflective section of number 13/2 of the Redipe Bulletin Magazine, we anticipate some ideas from an upcoming article related to the subject.

Educating in consciousness, the process by which education would allow us to assume existence and life with an edifying understanding age of majority, as planetary citizens, is, paradoxically, the least developed in education, this being one of the reasons for their loss and vulnerability. The reorientation of education involves deeply committing to the function of educating, of intervening in the formation of full consciousness, relevant to stop or slow down the deterioration of life in a world where particular interests prevail over the common good, selfishness over fraternity and solidarity.

The vital framework of which man is a part, is increasingly exposed to the scourge of individualism and ambition, to the torrent of the Self, of the misunderstandings not only of a cognitive nature, but, above all, inter-subjective nature, that is to say, of the other, of the singular similar if you prefer, and also those of an edifying order, of life as an integrated and interdependent complex of humans and non-humans. The growth of such misunderstandings involves education, deepens its unfathomable debts with life. Therein lies the imperative of educating in the formation of consciousness that flows with interconnected life. Precisely therein lies the misdirection of our education, by the fact of avoiding the function of educating.

It is well known that learning, knowing, teaching and educating are fundamental processes in educational and pedagogical action. However, it is usually overlooked that the latter is presented in a diffuse manner, in a veiled way in the curriculum, inexplicit in the didactics. There is not education in the formation of consciousness: generally the function of educating is assumed in an indoctrinating, invasive way, and the other processes in a technical way, if it is estimated, incorporeal. Teaching and learning are important to strengthen knowledge, but in the case of virtue, for example, this, according to Arendt, is not taught, and when it is intended to teach habits and customs, “we know only too well the speed with which they are unlearned and forgotten when a new circumstance requires a change in customs and behavior patterns” (op cit). This being so, we cannot continue to ignore and delay the commitment to reestablish in education the process of educating, in particular in the formation of self-awareness and the formation of a conscience.

One could understand the heterogeneity of the social, of the world, of the human being and life, and develop a reflexive consciousness of otherness. However, another question is to assume them, to gravitate with them on existence not without a feeling of ethical otherness, not without a sentient, responsible, edifying understanding, of welcoming, respect and cultivation of the community, of the other and of the other (things), of the inseparable link between human and non-human life.

It is necessary to recognize that it is not enough to appropriate and communicate knowledge and know-how, but also to educate with them, to provoke a comprehensive awareness, above all, understandings that allow us not only to appropriate, clarify and strengthen knowledge and know-how, but also to build with them, that is to say, to place them in function of intertwined life.

It is urgent to educate with knowledge, that is to say, to turn educational and pedagogical action towards the formation of a broad, rational and non-rational consciousness, a comprehensive consciousness that is not only cognitive and critical, but also intersubjective (human understanding, of the other), and above all a comprehensive consciousness -- so necessary in this world dominated by the thirst for economic, political, territorial and other expansion, of domination at the expense of the other, of nature and of cosmic life: edifying understandings that move us to care, with ethical responsibility, both for the other and for the other (“lo otro”) to assume an ethics for the well-being, for a full life.

The Pedagogy of Edifying Comprehension (PCE) highlights the insufficiency of communicating and teaching knowledge, and advocates that these processes educate: provoke generative and edifying reflections, multidimentional consciousness that allows understanding and situating comprehensions in the space of life; ethical comprehensions through which we flow as responsible coexistents that evolve as edifying persons by connecting reason and heart in their relationships; as “otric” beings that overcome self-absorption by welcoming the other and the other (“lo otro) as weavers, co-rationalizers of the existential complex.

At this point the PCE brings to education reflections and conceptual and strategic proposals to face the misunderstandings by which we deepen the abyss of darkness from which we abandon ourselves to the fate of being, to an existence without presence, without the power of being, to re-existing, of connecting with life, powerfully invaded, aggregated and controlled to continue to remain passive spectators of their vulnerability and precariousness, of the trivialization of aggression and erosion of life.

As a pedagogical, didactic and discursive perspective, the edifying understanding is on the path of cultural bets for a better world of worlds, respectful of common life; in the march of enhancing and using our knowledge, wisdom and understandings with feeling and an edifying and non-erosive attitude, in any case envisioning and leading paths that we can live being better humans, where the differences and conflicts that manifest themselves in existence are not resolved in a harmful way

-with such aggression, which often borders on physical or psychological cruelty -but with a binding majority of age, If you want to be biocentric, for the interdependent life, and by which we assume ourselves as responsible and respectful coexistence beings of the other and the other (“lo otro”) , people with cognitive, reflective, affective and acting potentials, among

others, for the cultivation of themselves, of community, of the intertwined life tissue, of the existential plexus.

Consciousness located in reason and reflection is not enough to face the self, the sameness and breathe the air of integrated life; it is necessary to gain an uplifting presence in coexistence.

This is one of the great challenges awaiting educational institution to assume the function of educating and embracing life.