Importance of Public Education

Pillar of the great urban societies of the 20th century, public education is one of the elements that has allowed the development culture of the different sectors of society that until then remained excluded from the process of teaching-learning. In addition, it has contributed to the formation of a mass of inhabitants identified with the patriotic symbols of a country, its history and its traditions.

The birth of a new way of transmitting knowledge: the public school

We could say that from the second half of the 19th century and especially throughout the 20th century it became popular in many countries of the West the notion that it was important to educate the great mass of a country's inhabitants, to allow them access to literacy and transmit the knowledge that imitated the academic and that had never before been put at the service of working sectors of the society.

This had to do with the need to build states where the population to govern had a feeling of belonging and active participation in the

construction of that reality. It is in this way that for a long time all sectors of the population were able to mix in public schools, receiving a balanced education without social differences.

What is the role of public education today?

As the decades passed and modern Western society transformed, so too did the traditions and thus a term that was not central before entered the game of education: the privatization of education. Thus, at the end of the 20th century, a large number of sectors of the middle class were able to access a private education that was supposed to be of better quality than the public one. Thus, the concept of public education entered into a crisis and has remained in that situation ever since.

However, it is very important to point out that public education has managed and continues to manage even today to balance access to education or learning for all social classes. This implies that any person, regardless of their socioeconomic condition, can access education (which is understood as a right and not as a privilege) to be trained, complete the minimum level of compulsory studies and thereby be able to build a better future for themselves and their family.

In addition, it breaks with the idea that those who have money should have access to a better education because even education that is given in a framework of equality often has a higher level than that which involves business.

Images: Fotolia. Sonulkaster – Jpgon