Historical-conceptual elements of Western educational systems. The Costa Rican case within a globalization framework

Abstract

Thinking of education requires an exercise of epistemological surveillance that
allows visualizing the complex gear existing among the historical processes of
human evolution, where organizational models are brought about to seek the
development or wellbeing of individuals, besides increasingly evident trends
in which knowledge is subordinated to institutionalism. In this regard, it is
important to review some general features of education that are typical of the
western world –with an emphasis on the Costa Rican scenario- and that allow
establishing a dialogue between stages such as colonization and modernity –
for example-, and the creation of educational models that replicate the modus
operandi of the economic system, leading to a landscape that does not match
the principles of a search for overall wellbeing and respect for the diversity of
human thought under a framework of the ethical and philosophical structure of
education as a fundamental right of every human being.