The current
What COPEHU is
The Universalist Humanist Pedagogical Current – COPEHU is a current of an international character that researches, develops and applies the Pedagogy of Intentionality in educational and community settings. It is part of the World Center of Humanist Studies.
It emerged in 2011 in Argentina as a collective expression oriented towards translating the principles of New Universalist Humanism and the Work of Silo (Mario Luis Rodríguez Cobos, 1938–2010) into the educational field, giving development and expansion to the Pedagogy of Intentionality —a book by Mario Aguilar and Rebecca Bize— with an approach of intentional learning and a methodology based on integral experience, in which reflection, active practice, the inner dimension and meaning converge.
Since then, it has been carrying out actions in various countries of Latin America and Europe.
It recognizes the contributions of existentialism, phenomenology and the research of the neurosciences, as well as the educational work of authors such as Humberto Maturana, Lev Vygotsky, Paulo Freire and Célestin Freinet, among others.
This trajectory rests on an understanding of the educational fact worth making explicit: every educational paradigm starts from a particular vision of the world, of the human being, of their consciousness and of their social function, from which theories of learning and the meaning of educational work are configured. These conceptions are not neutral, and today they are challenged by a scenario of accelerated change.
From our perspective, the need to recognize the individual as an active subject of learning becomes evident: that is, an intentional being who aspires to grow as a human being in their possibility of transforming the world and reality, with their gaze set on a desired future.
All of this configures a new vision that sees each human being arriving in the world with a unique and non-transferable mission, in a humanizing direction. In this sense, the physical, emotional, relational and mental setting that society provides to enable learning and the fulfilment of such a personal mission in social function becomes fundamental.
From this understanding, we educators are called to live and experience this proposal, unfolding it in the different settings of interaction with the new generations.
It is a conception placed at the disposal of the new generations as a horizon of meaning, recognizing them as inspired builders of the Human Nation of the new times.
What is Humanizing Education?
Humanizing Education is a conception that places the human being as the central value and concern, oriented towards overcoming pain, suffering and every form of violence.
It is an education that starts from experience, generating the settings conducive to studying, exchanging, reflecting and meditating on the deep meaning of education and of the act of teaching.
This view opens the possibility for those who take part in the educational setting to ask themselves about the meaning of their existence and their transcendence. Within this framework, personal and social development are promoted simultaneously, recognizing as valuable both the tangible and the intangible. That is, we consider the inner dimension fundamental, understood as the awakening of contact with the sacred within oneself, independently of the culture or belief —religious or not— that one holds.
It is an education that seeks to enable and awaken in the new generations the taste for learning, reflecting, researching and transforming; an education that fosters awareness of oneself and of one's own actions, in the direction of a desired future.
It also includes an explicit commitment to the culture of nonviolence, recognizing that at the present historical moment violence is no longer admissible as a form of coexistence, conflict resolution or attainment of objectives.
In this context, we invite reflection on the "what for" of educating and the "how" we can contribute to the integral development of the new generations, giving a new meaning to educational action.