Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

Education, justice, and human rights

In this article the author reflects on the issue of justice and human rights, considering the demands of a deliberative democracy, along the lines of Habermas and, above all, of the proposals of a communicative democracy. Thus, at first, the author problematizes the relationships between democracy, justice, and human rights, giving special emphasis to the individualistic and merchantilized tendencies to see democracy and the rights, and to the deliberative and communicative conceptions of democracy, and their consequences in terms of justice and human rights. From this point, the reflection veers towards the field of education as another locus of justice, debating the issue of school justice and the concept of the school as a dialogical and communicative organization, highlighting, in Habermasian terms, the systemic and communicative functionalities that permeate it. The author concludes this framework by stressing, within the idea that the school is a place of many worlds and justices, the multiples rationalities mobilized by the school agents, who should make their choices aware of the fact that, when the communicative-emancipative rationality predominates over other types of rationality, justice and rights open up and universalize. Finally, this discussion is continued in the last part of the article, but now referred to the challenges of globalization understood in several senses, finishing with the reference, within a counter-hegemonic concept of globalization, to a "cosmopolitical democracy", supportive of a solidary and cosmo-citizenly cordiality based on the humans rights.

Education; Justice; Human rights; Globalization


Faculdade de Educação da Universidade de São Paulo Av. da Universidade, 308 - Biblioteca, 1º andar 05508-040 - São Paulo SP Brasil, Tel./Fax.: (55 11) 30913520 - São Paulo - SP - Brazil
E-mail: revedu@usp.br