CRITICAL THINKING AND POLITICAL COHERENCE IN THE COLOMBIAN TEACHING PROFESSION: THE LEFT, THE SCHOOL, AND THE VOTE

Abstract

The influence of leftist thought on Colombian public education and its inconsistencies with the political coherence of the teaching profession emerges from a critical documentary review. Within a context of conflicting interests, theories such as Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy and decolonial thought are analyzed in terms of how they have permeated the pedagogical discourse of teachers organized under the FECODE union and within Colombian educational policies. In this setting, the central proposition argues that there is an unresolved tension between the transformative discourse circulating in schools and the concrete political practices of teachers as citizens, particularly in the exercise of voting. If critical thinking is the core of the teaching mission, that same criticality must be applied to the act of voting that is, identifying which power structures are normalized, which discourses are naturalized, and which interests are reproduced when casting a ballot. According to the consulted framework, coherence between theory and political practice is not optional for an educator who identifies as an agent of social change; rather, it is an unavoidable ethical demand that urgently requires praxis in daily work, understanding from their lived realities what social consciousness is and how to apply it in context. In conclusion, Colombian teachers face the challenge of embodying social justice in the classroom and of teaching critical thinking through a collective construction of their needs.