School education and social knowledge in workers' narratives: the work of the word and of the historical awareness

Abstract

This paper aims to reflect on the relationship between school knowledge and other social knowledge, and on the inconvenience of privileging literate culture in detriment of other cultures, in capitalist society. From goods carriers narratives we want to understand how they have an awareness of the un equal relationship between different knowledge, how they explain in detail their knowledge elaborated in every day experience of the work universe, and how they present a demand for their recognition, demystifying discourses, which disqualify them, and exposing the weaknesses of a system where they coexist with many educated unemployed people. The narrative excerpts analyzed in this paper will remit us to the Rüsen (2001) prospect on the role of narrative in the construction of historical consciousness and to Portelli (1996), when he says that to narrate is to explain and that the narrative philosophy goes along with the facts, and that, in oral narratives, we can grasp the consciousness work from the work of the word. Dealing with oral narratives, we propose to consider the goods carriers experiences as a stimulus to reflect on the struggles for "liberating" school education meanings, "beyond capital", which dialogue with other social knowledge and is made considering individuals life experiences and not excluding or disqualifying other knowledge. Building a "liberating" education is the only way to win a story where the domain of school knowledge almost always has been associated with privilege and domination.