Contextualization

As we stated in the book How to Design a Competency-Based Curriculum? (De Zubiría, 2012), the question "Who Do We Teach?" relates to the characterization of the sociocultural context that conditions society at a given historical moment and time. For this reason, when defining the curriculum design, it is necessary to characterize the historical, cultural, social, institutional, and personal context of each of the students under our responsibility.

This principle is based on a more general one derived from sociocultural approaches, and formulated in depth by Vygotsky, Wallon, and Merani: we are historically and culturally determined beings. Therefore, when defining the curriculum, it is necessary to specify the context in which we will do so. We are social, historical, and cultural beings, and therefore we need to be rooted in time, space, and culture.

Context characterizes the conditions, customs, values, and ideas of a culture in a given time and space. Time, culture, and space intersect to characterize the ways of thinking, feeling, and acting of a human group and a particular individual.

As a social and cultural process, education must adapt to its environment and culture. For this reason, it differs according to contexts, times, and cultures. Thus, its objectives must take into account the individual and social characteristics of children in training, so that they are useful to them and to the societies in which they are being educated, and according to the conditions and needs of the times and cultures in which they develop. The content must reflect the time, space, and culture to be individually, socially, and historically relevant. It must contribute to their development and consolidation.

According to this principle, all areas, when selecting objectives and content, must take into account the conditions of the sociocultural, historical, environmental, institutional, and personal context. To take the sociocultural context into account, we must engage in dialogue with the culture, with its myths, rituals, interpretations, fantasies, representations, expressions, values, and ideologies. We must understand it, interpret it, question it, relativize it, and project it. Therefore, the role of the school may not always be procultural; sometimes it should be countercultural, but it must always address the cultural context that conditions it.

It is decontextualized to pontificate from another culture without knowing or understanding the nature of the ideas and values ​​that underpin different cultures in which the school is also immersed. This is what happens when we feel we possess a single truth. This is what happens when we ignore ways, forms, values, and religions other than our own. This is what happened to Spain when it crushed, with blood and fire, the various ancient cultures that had developed ideas, religions, myths, and sciences different from those developed in Europe by the 15th century. This is what happens to those who believe there is only one direction and one sense in history, and who therefore feel entitled to trample on cultures that stray from that historical horizon. This is why Hitler felt he had the right to eliminate a race different from his own. This is why today in France, Arab women are prohibited from wearing the burqa in the streets, to teach Muslims that only those who think and value the way Catholics and Westerners do will be welcomed on the streets of Paris. This is the logic of single-minded, hegemonic thinking. It is the logic of the absence of freedom and disrespect for what is different.