Education has historically assumed strategic importance to the State as the instrument to legitimate an excludent society. The understanding of the ideologic processes that go together with the political and economical changes through which capitalism deals with its crisis, becomes invaluable for school phychologists. In the first part this article describes some of the main educacional changes that we have witnessed and the motivations declared by govenment officials. In the second part, the article deals with the relations between the educational changes and neoliberal policies, criticizing some of its premises through the historic materialism concept of ideology.
Education; Public school; Educational policy; Liberalism; Ideology; Educational reform