A critical approach to the idea of university extension

Abstract

This article is a reflection based on years of extension experience in different regions such as the Gulf of Nicoya, the Caribbean Coast and Nueva Cinchona, among others. These work experiences constitute the basis for the analysis of the extension practices, as well as, the theoretical assumptions involved in them, witch in some cases we considered that they must be overcome and studied from critical perspectives. Of course, it’s not about the moral imperatives, or if the problem of the extension practices are seen external to our own experiences; it is rather the opposite; the dialectical tensions that are part of the own university and the structural-historical conditions (economic, cultural, political) of the most vulnerable communities that interfere in the conception of university extension, which meaning has been static to changes, emergent phenomena and current problems. This conception does not respond to a clear idea of social transformation since the theoretical content that supports it is unreal and irrational, nevertheless it has been presented to us as logical and rational. Therefore, this content belongs to a scientific and cultural modernity that also affects the University. The purpose is to build possibilities of factual transformation, from a revision of various myths that modernity has created to the analysis of the role of the extension of the public University as player or debunker of certain concepts.