Abstract
A Study on the Relation between Social Vulnerability, Marginalization and the Role of the School as an Agent for Analysis and Social Change, in a District of Valencia-Spain The global curriculum requires a more efficient, competitive and measurable education, because practices and dispositive of neoliberal govern mentality are dominating in most of the discursive fields about education. The formal education selects contents and knowledge as well as asking for results and competences. (Apple, 1993). In the context with problems of marginalization and social exclusion, the schools contextualize the formative proposal. The teachers in the classroom decide if they want to activate a process of teaching-learning as reproduction of a model or towards a pedagogical innovation. (McLaren, 2014). Do the schools talk about the history, the geography, the culture where the children live? Do the schools analyze the condition of marginalization and the social exclusion? Is the educational action activated to identify the condition of social vulnerability? El Cabanyal is an historical district on the coast of Valencia- Spain. This unique and picturesque neighbourhood has its origins in the XV century as a fisherman’s village. In 1993 the district was declared Heritage of Cultural Interest. In 2001, the City Council approved the Special Plan for Interior Reform. The plan implied to extend an avenue, through the middle of the district with the destruction of 1651 houses and the displacement of 1200 families. Since the adoption of the plan, the pattern of human relationships has been destroyed; some people have left, and many empty buildings have been occupied. Today the social network community is very eclectic but is even a place of social conflict between old people that have been living in the neighbourhood since they were born, the community of Spanish gipsy, the group of Roma people, and other groups of immigrants. The district lives in a condition of marginality; problems of drugs and crime, and in this condition, the school could be an agent for analysis and social change.