Hegemony, State and Intellectuals: Weaving a Framework for the Analysis of Educational Policies

Abstract

This article weaves a theoretical framework for analyzing educational policies that have hegemony as a core element. We therefore seek to offer some theoretical elements of Gramscian thought to help understand how hegemonic positions are constructed around certain educational policies and how institutions and individual subjects work to ensure their acceptance and implementation by governments. By articulating the concepts of hegemony, integral and intellectual State, we trace theoretical and practical paths of State and intellectuals’ actions in con(forming) ideological and political stances that delimit conceptions of education and educational policy which bring together and reject those who, based on their institutional condition, influence decisions on public education policies. Both in civil and political society, ideologies of various shades are set in motion to establish hegemonies related to specific aspects of social and political life that strengthen or weaken the hegemony of the dominant classes, and that working classes have an obvious desire to see their interests become increasingly hegemonic. We thus assume that, in the processes of establishing State educational policies, the participation of intellectuals—from subaltern classes in the topics under debate—must be guided by a vision articulating the immediate demands related to those that give unity and coherence to a worldview based on the philosophy of praxis.