Normalization and education: Repression of natural harmony or emancipation of perspectives disharmony?

Abstract

The issues of normality of people, generally dealt with in the context of 'P' sciences (psychology, psychiatry and psychotherapy), have been coupled with the issue of implementing social norms in education process dealt with in the context of pedagogy. A well-established view that the issue of normality is 'ontologically evident' and rests upon natural behavior is opposed to views of the culturally situated normal-abnormal dimension and those of abnormality as a social structure. It has been shown that the border between the domains of normal and abnormal is vague, that it rests upon the absence of criteria giving privilege to invisible social groups and that those criteria change in time and differ in different cultures. Education that is tending to the harmonization of normality founded on what is natural and common to most humans is opposed to the view of education that is nurturing multiperspectivism - emancipation of as much diversity of perspectives as possible, being frequently disharmonious, and whose harmonization can be achieved only in a long-lasting, enduring and demanding process of tolerating differences.

Keywords

• normalization
• normality
• abnormality
• education
• ontological obviousness
• society pathologization.