Education, political culture, public reason. A historical reading

Some social and political situations and many educational tasks are today, the historical result of a long process which has been shaping them; and also the current manifestation of aims and practices which have previously had other developments. It is the case of the entails and commitments that have been taking place between the concept and the practice of education, and also of the attempts of advancing or penetrating into a political democratic culture. In this paper we elaborate a historical approach which tries to announce and interpret important ideas which were configured along with decisive and complex moments of our contemporary history. For it we plan the axis of its progressive evolution in Spain, by means of the thought of relevant figures in the intellectual and political order, such as Giner de los Rios, Rafael Altamira, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Manuel Azana and some others. With his analysis we try to clarify from a historical perspective the role that education has in the strengthening of the citizenship, the cohesion and the vitality of the nation, or the genuineness in the political democratization.