The paper proposes a rereading of critical pedagogy in the light of its theorical roots in the thought of K. Marx and F. Engels, with particular attention to the structural link between training and factory work. Starting from an analysis of some Marxian and Engelsian texts, the article reconstructs the way in which education is to be conceived as a historical-social product inscribed in capitalist relations of production. In this perspective, education does not appear as a neutral or autonomous environment, but is identified in its ‘structural ideology’. Factory work, taken as a paradigm of modern industrial rationality, allows us to understand how educational models have contributed to the naturalization of specific forms of knowledge, competence and subjectivity functional to capital. The article highlights how, already in Marx and Engels, an alternative conception of education emerges, oriented towards the integral development of the individual and the recomposition between manual and intellectual work. Starting from these premises, the essay argues that contemporary critical pedagogy can be strengthened by a return to its materialistic matrices, recovering a historical and political reading of educational processes and reaffirming the role of education as a practice of critique and transformation of existing social relations.
Pedagogia e materialismo storico: l’utilità dell’interpretazione marx-engelsiana del rapporto industria-educazione per la pedagogia critica
G Borghese
2026-01-01
Abstract
The paper proposes a rereading of critical pedagogy in the light of its theorical roots in the thought of K. Marx and F. Engels, with particular attention to the structural link between training and factory work. Starting from an analysis of some Marxian and Engelsian texts, the article reconstructs the way in which education is to be conceived as a historical-social product inscribed in capitalist relations of production. In this perspective, education does not appear as a neutral or autonomous environment, but is identified in its ‘structural ideology’. Factory work, taken as a paradigm of modern industrial rationality, allows us to understand how educational models have contributed to the naturalization of specific forms of knowledge, competence and subjectivity functional to capital. The article highlights how, already in Marx and Engels, an alternative conception of education emerges, oriented towards the integral development of the individual and the recomposition between manual and intellectual work. Starting from these premises, the essay argues that contemporary critical pedagogy can be strengthened by a return to its materialistic matrices, recovering a historical and political reading of educational processes and reaffirming the role of education as a practice of critique and transformation of existing social relations.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
