"We are moving towards a society of mediocrities in which no one knows more than anyone else. Objective truth will not exist and the most voted opinion will be taken as such. The greatest absurdities will be accepted because no one will dare to go against the majority". This is one of the maxims with which Alicia Delibes Liniers culminates her work. The suicide of the West. The renunciation of the transmission of knowledge.
This is a very interesting volume through which we learn about the names and theories that have marked education in the last three centuries, leading to the current and worrying situation of schools and universities in the West.
Backed by an extensive curriculum in the field of teaching, Delibes Liniers goes through the vicissitudes of the educational field starting with the rupture that the values of the French Revolution meant for the development of schools. As expected, one of the names at the center of this part is Rousseau.
The French thinker's ideas led to a conception of educational freedom that was committed to the non-existence of rules, teachings or discipline and that led, from its first applications, to educational disasters of the first order in France.
The author also reviews educational theories and applications such as the one marked by Wilhelm von Humboldt in Prussia or the different names and stages that the famous Institución Libre de Enseñanza had in the cultured spheres of Spain.
The greatest qualitative leap came in the West after the two world wars, the rise of socialism in Eastern Europe and Asia and the development of Marxist theories in education. John Dewey, of whose educational theories, contrary to any hint of exigency, Hannah Arendt made a magnificent critique, stands out at the beginning of these years.
However, it was the May 68 revolution that has undoubtedly had the greatest impact on the evolution of educational theories and projects in the West in recent decades, and to which the author devotes a large part of the second part of this book.
Of special interest, perhaps because of its proximity to the current situation, is the analysis made by Alicia Delibes Liniers of the different waves of thought translated into educational projects and laws in the last twenty years of the twentieth century, as well as the interesting reflection on some realities that, even today, drag the educational field in the West, especially in Spain, such as the emergence of multiculturalism or what Delibes Liniers describes as "pedagogical myths", namely sustainable education, inclusiveness or the teacher. Googleand that are, in short, a more political than educational proposition in their conception. Some myths that join the pretended imposition of a unique thought through the classrooms.
The suicide of the West. The renunciation of the transmission of knowledge is an almost obligatory book for those who are interested in understanding the "anti-educational" drift of education in the West and the betrayal resulting from the politicization of education. Also to understand that, perhaps, all is not lost and we can learn from the more than obvious mistakes of ideologies and the successes of an education in which effort, perseverance and respect are valued.
A book that has the virtue of being read with pleasure and calls for personal reflection. A perfect compilation of the last centuries in education in which, hopefully, we can look at the possible solutions and the mistakes already made to achieve an integral social commitment in the educational task.
