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Educational Processes: Enlightenment and Self-critical Transformation

Daniela Mejía Miranda

Facultad De Bellas Artes y Humanidades

LI573: Academic Discourse II

Juan Manuel Martínez García

March 29th, 2023

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Educational Processes: Enlightenment and Self-critical Transformation

Starting an education process and making part of an academic community implies

entering the darkness of the knowledge of a new reality and ourselves. In this ambit, self-

knowledge, self-consciousness, self-critical, perceptual and mental transformation, and acquiring

an academic identity happen when an individual immerses himself/herself into the unknown

depths of educational and interpretational dimensions. Education linked to the interpretation

processes involves transformations in terms of the thoughts’ complexion, knowledge bases

support, and stimulate transitions and variations related to the creation and construction of

statements, considerations, beliefs, wills, and our essence. Furthermore, as mentioned by Sark

(2018) in the document Nietzsche’s Thoughts on Becoming Who We Are “By becoming self-

conscious and self-critical, we exercise our will to power and thereby have the ability to create

ourselves, our lives, and our futures” (par.5). In other terms, entering and becoming part of a new

interpretational cycle involves constituting our uniqueness and having access to reality and to

ourselves from obscure and unintelligible points of view to which we previously had no access.

On the other hand, self-perception implies the internal and external perspective of what

determines and influences our essence as intellectual and academic beings. Related to the

educational ambit, people perceive their process as the reflection of their self-development; as a

result, they evaluate and improve their identity and process based on the notion of themselves as

possessors of intellectual character and virtues. As mentioned by Baehr (2015) “Intellectual

character is part of your character (your dispositions to act, think, and feel) that pertains to

thinking and learning. Intellectual virtues are ‘excellences’ of this aspect of character” (p.18)

Therefore the elements that people use to maximize their educational process are linked to the

demands of their capacities of what it can offer from its academic identity because the
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educational process is a progressive evolution dependent on our direction, our influence, and the

complexion of our intellectual character.

Finally, deepening in the specificities of what we are part of, but of what we do not have

an awareness of is also a form of stimulation, transformation, and empowerment for students.

Academic discourse II is one space where practices related to consciousness and knowledge of

ourselves act as alternatives to promote transformative experiences of thoughts, perceptions, and

primarily the notions about ourselves. As Erdogan (2016) mentioned: “Discourse is not only

about meaning, but also about objectivity and relations. Discourses construct subjects and their

relationship with their environment” (p.17) Accordingly, academic discourse offers a space of

introspection, contemplation, and integration more than only offering obscure terminology that is

unfathomable. Otherwise stated, academic discourse gives us, through the course's significance,

the possibility to reflect on our educational reality, on the authors' reality, on the professor's

statements, on our identity, in general terms on those who allow the academic discourse: us as

the academic community.

Bibliography

Sark, K. (November 13th, 2018). Friedrich Nietzsche’s thoughts on becoming who we are. Suites

Culturelles. https://suitesculturelles.wordpress.com/2018/11/13/friedrich-nietzsches-

thoughts-on-becoming-who-we-are/

Baehr. (2015). Recovered on March 29th, 2023, from chrome-extension:

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%20Guide%20to%20Educating%20for%20Intellectual%20Virtues%20(5523)/
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Cultivating%20Good%20Minds_%20A%20Philosophical%20&%20-%20Baehr,

%20Jason.pdf

Erdogan. (2016). Session 5 - Google Drive. Recovered on March 29th, 2023, Google.com. R,

from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zezlTBb7jBIEdWZVnb0w2qkzsaQKCOi/view?

usp=share_link