There was outrage among some circles after Uribe’s denunciation of a FARC’s "intellectual block” disorienting Colombians with a dishonest peace discourse. These comments naturally caused indignation not only for the nature of the accusations and the implications for the lives of the members of such group, but also for its ambiguity. Much of the aftermath focused on calling the president to explicitly express who he was referring to. However, a question emerges, even if there is an intellectual block, is there a problem with a public debate among different currents of thought?
The root of this mis-education lies, obviously, in the school system.
Colombian secondary education hampers the capacity for critical thinking and limits the acquisition of intellectual tools for analyzing economic and political issues that are of paramount importance in any society. The school system is based on memorizing facts in order to recite back in examinations. Essays and class debates are a novelty. Basic economic principles and political systems are hardly ever taught.
Therefore, many Colombians are oblivious to the fact that politics is about who gets what, when and how, while economics is about devising the best system to distribute scarce resources. If more people were to acquire this basic knowledge major changes on how the government operates and the policies pursued could be expected to occur.
Teaching politics and economics is not an absurd idea for secondary school students in many countries in Europe. History classes for example, are no longer about memorizing dates, but about understanding the origin and consequences of historic events. Teenagers are also taught about the different forms of ruling and the differences between the 'left' and the 'right' together with the implications for different sectors of society.
The FARC have tainted the Marxist-Leninist ideology. However, this neither means that people utilizing this ideology are members of the FARC nor that this ideology's criticism to dogmatic capitalism has become irrelevant. In the contrary, their theses are more relevant now than ever since they vastly explain the structural problems that led to the current financial crisis. A case in point is the sales boost that Karl Marx 'Das Kapital' has received in Germany with the financial crisis.
Independently of different ideologies' validity there is a lot to gain if opposing currents of thought can be debated without being stigmatized. Perhaps then Colombians would acquire a deeper understanding of the ideological forces that are fuelling this conflict. In a pluralist society open dialogue ought to be encouraged instead of being openly condemned. We need a society where "war" of ideas supplants conventional wars.
Author Sebastian Castaneda is Colombian studies psychology and political economy at the University of Hong Kong
