Social Education and COVID-19

Abstract

The pandemic has imposed a radical change on our lives and it has made social education an essential service. In a context in which the right to individual freedom prevails over the collective good, the pandemic has prompted a questioning of the capitalist model, which has been completely shaken. All kinds of social problems have emerged, exposing a social policy model based on charity and not on the emancipation and autonomy of individuals. In this context, social educators continue to work from a position of precariousness and invisibility. They do their best to work in and for a system that defends interests contrary to their own, finding themselves obliged to deal with such contradictions as working in social education while respecting social distances, or asking themselves whether they are really essential inasmuch as they represent a minimum service for subsistence that prevents the system from collapsing. A group of 22 students has taken the opportunity to reflect on this situation within the framework of the Supervision of Internship course. The group read up on the subject and interviewed educators, and the results are presented in this paper.      

Keywords: Social education, COVID-19, experiential learning, reflective practice, university, students.