Curricular structure of secondary education in Costa Rica: Between utilitarism and the labor market

Abstract

The article aims to perform an analytical review on the composition of the curricular structure at the level of secondary education in Costa Rica. The analysis is contextualized in key aspects of the educational policies promulgated during the last two decades and, in turn, a critical reflection is developed around it, based on approaches of UNESCO and other diverse specialized bibliography. The relevance of the study is to analyze the relevance of the current curricular structure of the Costa Rican educational project, considering the diverse training needs existing in the country, according to geographical locations and their productive characteristics, as well as their respective sociocultural identities. It is concluded that the current Costa Rican educational project presents a standardized rigidity, because its educational offer is aimed at training and training for employability in the labor market of neoclassical or neoliberal economics. Consequently, the educational project is exclusive, inequitable and limits compliance by guaranteeing equal opportunities for all the different student populations of the country. An in-depth reform of said project is required, in order to make it effectively flexible, inclusive, pertinent, significant and socioculturally contextualized.