Tradición y modernidad en las políticas educativas en España: una revisión de las últimas décadas

Abstract

In the present paper, we will present an approximate outlook of a few of the more relevant issues that determine, at the same time that reflect, the Spanish educative policies deployed from 1980 up to now. This scan of the last 25 years will allow us to see (even in a superficial and inevitably partial fashion) the tension and dialectic between tradition (noted for the persistence of outdated forms of conceiving and delivering education) and modernity (bearer of innovative trends, although not exempt from ambivalence and contradictions in its own development). We will pay close attention to those axes that can work as a starting point for our reflection, namely: educative policies, organization of the educative system, European convergence and transnational organizations that regulate educative policies. In the end, we present a few conclusions that, even though they are still open, present the persistence of reproductive dynamics. In this occasion, our analysis is constricted to the sphere of formal education, without failing to acknowledge the growing importance of non-formal and informal educative spaces, and the importance of the spheres derived from them. Our approach has to be considered within a singular interpretation of the consequences and implications of the late modernity in which the studied period takes place.