Abstract

SANTIAGO JIMENEZ, María Evelinda; PARRA VICTORINO, José Bernardo  and  MURILLO MURILLO, Misael. The intellectual teacher: An agent of critical reflection. Perfiles educativos [online]. 2012, vol.34, n.137, pp.164-178. ISSN 0185-2698.

The intellectual teacher carries out two main functions within the society: to enlighten about how people must live in democratic societies and to offer to their members an instrumental training; both kinds of knowledge are necessary and useful in order to build a decent life project. Nevertheless, the teacher has gradually turned into a simple transmitter of instrumental knowledge with which he/she indoctrinates the students about the benefits of becoming disciplined and obedient wage earners within the capitalist system. In this sense school and the classroom are definitively not neutral, but social spaces where sociocultural exchanges take place and where controversial relations arise, and, at the same time, spaces for resistance, spaces where the individuals learn to interpret reality through the activity of a teacher who manages the critical reflection within the classroom.

Keywords : Criticai reflexión; Complexity; Intellectual teacher.