Educational academics and intellectuals in the democratic reconstruction of Argentina: Discussions around a modern scientific program

Abstract In 1983, at the very end of the dictatorial period in Argentina, the reconstitution of the spaces in which knowledge was produced in education reopened interrupted debates on both modernization and the future of national education. The intention of consolidating a series of consensual processes aimed to strengthen the educational discourse and the state capacities. Through the analysis of documents and interventions produced by intellectuals, the positions of the educational academics in Argentina, in their struggle to re-establish a state expert layer, are discussed by exposing both the tensions and possibilities that they implied. The conclusions let us consider three major tensions: (i) the technical-bureaucratic and statistical weakness of the education system, (ii) the lack of cohesion of this professional space and (iii) the difficulty to establish a modern and scientific program that could reach the ways in which state decisions were made