Abstract

ROJAS BETANCUR, Héctor Mauricio. The importance, for the social development of the Country, of public policy on training Colombian children and youths in research. Rev.latinoam.cienc.soc.niñez juv [online]. 2008, vol.6, n.2, pp.885-906. ISSN 1692-715X.

Two assumptions contain the node of justification for the inclusion and development of public policy about training children and youths in research. The first assumption is that scientific research is the production, appropriation, and application of knowledge through specific utilization and validation rules. The second assumption indicates that public policy in topics like science, technology and society should privilege the training of children and youths. To achieve this, a social review of training and pedagogical practices in the Country should be carried out, because it shows a significant underdevelopment in science, especially in the configuration of academic communities that guarantee a widening generational relay for the present and the future, and in the infusion of research with a social orientation. In this paper, the author's intention is to show that, even though the purpose of training children and youths in science is articulated among the main topics of social development, its application reduces to a didactic strategy of very little impact in education and research, because, in spite of the fact that children and youths have a high problematization capacity to become scientists, the greater responsibility falls to schools that are not designed to empower such capacities and are ill-disposed to change their academic and administrative practices.

Keywords : Public policy; scientific training; social development.

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