Infancia, trabajo y educación. Evaluación de una relación compleja

The problem of the relationship between education and working childhood and adolescence is delicate, complex, multifaceted and, still, scarcely explored. With few exceptions, this true socio-pedagogical knot has so far been treated more from contrasting ideological assumptions than from a real investigative intention. This translates into a linear process of abstract formalization of the relationship between childhood and work, a relationship that has been understood, on many occasions, as absolutely negative and contrary to the processes of education, and in particular to those of schooling.

The empirical evidence and statistical data related to this phenomenon, "however, are not homogeneous or conclusive. On the contrary, they appear gloomy and contradictory to those who study them, so that the relationship between education and work is neither consensual nor sufficiently clarified. Hence the need to return to the complex set of issues that this relationship concerns in a more profound, articulated and demanding manner.

This is the reason for this book, which has been the result of several years of coordinated research between students and professors of the "Area of Studies on Family, Childhood and Society" of the Research Center on Social Dynamics, of the Faculty of Social Sciences. and Humanas of the Externado University of Colombia, whose primary objective is to contribute to problematizing in a transcendent, conscious and articulated way the field of observation that has brought us together.