Integrated high school and democratic management: the school council as a laboratory of citizenship

Abstract

Reflecting on education leads to an analysis of the ways in which men relate to each other and to nature, since the means of production at each moment in history determines a specific educational structure. As a historical construct, one can also perceive variations within the same economic system, in a perspective of more inclusive or more exclusive education, depending on the correlation of forces between the existing social classes. In this sense, despite the fact that integral, polytechnic or omnilateral training is presented as a proposal for education that can only be fully achieved in a society in which the working class has political power, it is possible, even within the system of capital domination, to find the germ of such training: Integrated High School (EMI). Like polytechnic training, EMI has work as its educational principle. Its formative dimensions are work, science and culture; an articulation between theory and practice. This article aims to discuss a little about the importance of the school council in this crossing for a comprehensive training, materialized in EMI. We understand that the body, by allowing the school community to deliberate on pedagogical, financial and administrative aspects of the school institution, constitutes a citizenship laboratory, a workshop that unites theory (contents about citizenship) to practice. We conclude by stating that the school that intends to train the subject in its entirety, should encourage him to participate in decision-making processes, understanding him as a citizen of the future and the present.