RECOGNIZING RURAL CULTURE AS A FOUNDATIONAL ELEMENT OF ETHICAL EDUCATION AMONG COLOMBIAN MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

This academic essay examines the relationship between Colombian rural culture and ethical development among students in lower secondary education, with the aim of recognizing rural culture as a foundational matrix for the moral values of young people living in these contexts. It was argued that this culture does not function as a backdrop but rather as a constitutive condition of ethical formation; values emerge from a formative ecology where the extended family, the territory, popular religiosity, and the historical experience of the post-armed conflict era act as moral agents of greater potency than formal school instruction.  Based on a critical analysis of approaches drawn from cultural anthropology, Latin American philosophy, the sociology of education, critical pedagogy, the psychology of moral development, the ethics of care, theories of justice and human capabilities articulated with recent Latin American empirical research the essay argues that tensions between formal school culture and local rural cultures generate forms of symbolic violence that erode students’ ethical identity when the school fails to recognize the legitimacy of community moral capital. It is concluded that an ethical pedagogy relevant to these contexts must be based on the recognition of community moral knowledge, expand students’ ethical capacities in the sense described by Nussbaum, position rural teachers as bearers of knowledge rather than merely as implementers of the curriculum, and utilize the Institutional Educational Project as a space for ensuring cultural relevance.