Youth, the unitary school, and the path to leadership formation

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the role of Gramsci’s unitary school in the process of educating and raising awareness among Young people from the working classes. To this end, texts written by Gramsci before and during his imprisonment were analyzed. Through them, we seek to demonstrate that Gramsci believed the school should guarantee young people access to the knowledge necessary for exercising leadership roles. Furthermore, this study also aims to show how, under the capitalist mode of production, the schooling process for youth occurs in a dichotomous manner: while some will have access to an education geared toward forming leaders (specialists + politicians), the majority will have access to knowledge intended only for the passive execution of tasks required by the current stage of capital development. In this sense, the struggle for a unitary school represents the defense of every student’s right to access systematized knowledge and a general, humanistic culture, which constitutes an antithesis to the bourgeois, dualistic model of education.