Recreate and reinvent university extension based on other foundations and realities. Inspirations from the centenary of the birth of Paulo Freire

Abstract

The crisis produced by the COVID–19 pandemic in our Latin American and Caribbean region has exacerbated the situations of inequality that we have been suffering in recent decades. Thus, the struggle between different models of society and social, political and ideological polarization have increased, posing new challenges to the work and mission of universities and, in particular, to university extension programs and projects. Critical university extension or social action appears in this context as an innovative proposal that takes up a conception of a committed university that has its antecedents in the University Reform of Córdoba more than a century ago and also finds a source of inspiration in the thought of Paulo Freire and his pioneering experience in the Secretariat of Cultural Extension of the University of Recife in the sixties. The contributions of the Freirean educational philosophy, acquire renewed validity in face of the need to recreate and reinvent the university extension for the new times.