Original article

The Education of Values in the Physical Culture Professionals with an Axiological-Martian Conception

0000-0002-8289-8007Dámaris Gastón González^{1  *}  , 0000-0001-7132-9020Rossana Capote Agüero¹  , 0000-0001-8844-4914Carlos Rogelio Villegas Rodríguez² 

¹Universidad de las Ciencias de la Cultura Física y el Deporte. La Habana, Cuba.

²Universidad de Camagüey "Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz" , Facultad de Cultura Física "Manuel Fajardo", Camagüey, Cuba.

ABSTRACT

Introduction:

Value-based education is a current concern linked to the very existence of humans which has been studied by politicians, specialists, and educators of different countries, regardless of their existing social systems. The study of Marti's works is an imperative that provides freshness and up-to-date knowledge to teachers in their practice of education when used properly and timely.

Aim:

To create systematic awareness about the formation of values in physical culture and sports professionals with an axiological conception, as one of the major challenges of Cuban society today.

Materials and methods:

This research relies on a qualitative, descriptive, and non-experimental approach based on analysis and synthesis, induction-deduction, and information collection using the Google search engine.

Results:

The theoretical rationale used in this research led to a reflection based on an axiological glimpse about the education of values in the future physical culture and sports graduates, and an expression of the practical needs and interests of humans, and individual socialization within group dynamics, as a concrete manifestation of physical culture and massive sports.

Conclusions:

Value-based education should not rely on decrees or by inculcating models, however valuable they are; values must be embraced with a dialectical, flexible, inclusive, and in-context perspective.

Key words: axiological conception; education; values.

INTRODUCTION

Value-based education is a current concern linked to the very existence of personality and its social condition, which has been studied by politicians, specialists, and educators of different countries, regardless of their existing social systems. ^{(Rojas-Muñoz et al., 2019)}.

It means that a group of civic, civil, and human values should be promoted in keeping with the social ideal pursued, based on justice, civic and patriotic action, and the professional ethics of cadres and workers of a system that rests on the Martian and Fidelist conception of revolutionary sports.

In that sense, the Party, Government, and the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education, and Recreation (INDER) have instructed institutions to prioritize the athletes' overall education process. This topic should be studied looking to implement viable alternatives depending on the current conditions, the new sports scenarios, and education on the adjustment and improvement of the Cuban sports movement (Acosta, 2020).

The study of Jose Marti's works is an imperative that provides freshness and up-to-date knowledge to teachers in their practice of education when used properly and timely. It is a key direction of the educational process, and a major way of developing education with patriotic values ^{(Borges-Bienes , 2021)}.

The contents of the curricula at every level should be linked to the study of Marti's life and work, for the profundity, significance, and beauty of his thoughts. Education must create a favorable setting in the institution once the Martian spirit has been impregnated, meaning a magnificence of ethics, patriotism, and cultural influence in the school. The new generations are expected to gain consciousness of the need to embrace the elements of thinking and behavior found in the example of Jose Marti.

It will help us understand the history of Marti's letters and its axiological conception. This paper examines Jose Marti's letters, with a compilation of the topics that he dealt with often, which are also, part of his way of thinking and acting.

These topics were not the only ones he wrote about. In this paper, the values that adorn his personality and their concepts, have been emphasized, thus creating a link to the history of Cuba.

The study of man as part of social development, their behaviors, and habits have been dealt with in several sciences with a philosophical basis in humanistic research. Martian humanism rose as the basis of revolutionary humanism, which favored the strengthening of Marxist-Leninist humanistic ideas. The human-society interaction permits an understanding of the role of historical subjects throughout social processes ^{(Ortiz-Blanco et al., 2020)}.

Accordingly, this paper aims to reflect systematically on the formation of values in physical culture and sports professionals with an axiological conception, as one of the major challenges of Cuban society today.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This research relies on a qualitative, descriptive, and non-experimental approach based on analysis and synthesis, induction-deduction, and information collection using the Google search engine. Information between January 1999 and April 11, 2022, was collected to conduct a bibliographic review of the different databases, including SCIelo.

With a selection of the most recent articles containing the following keywords: Education, values, and axiological conception in physical culture professionals.

The search was based on the plans, programs, and projects developed in Cuba, according to the sports model implemented upon the triumph of the Cuban revolution, in 1959: humanist, amateur, contrary to commercial spirit, taking into account the best traditions of the most eminent pedagogues, such as Jose Marti (1853-1895), and other scholars whose contributions have been significant in the education and implementation of the National Education System, which is epistemologically based on the most advanced revolutionary, anti-imperialist, and Marxist thoughts in Cuba, Latin America, and the rest of the world. It has been articulated with the ideas of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, which are part of the ethical, axiological, and humanistic approaches applied to education.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Today, humanity is challenged with the formation of a new man, which is the objective of present-day Cuban society with the greatest interest placed in men as the supreme value, to enhance the necessary qualities for the active social subjects they must have. The type of man desired by society must be prepared multilaterally, so there is an imperative to educate learned men interested in science and technology, who are healthy, happy, physically and intellectually prepared, and capable of having independent thinking. These men should be able to host a system of values that guides them into creators of the Cuban socialist society.

Consequently, a set of operative planning procedures was implemented through a short-term objective-based working system and plans, programs, and projects, which have been consolidated in recent years. In Cuba, that is a possibility due to the sports model created upon the triumph of the revolution, in 1959: humanist, amateur, and contrary to the commercial spirit and practices ^{(Marrero, 2017)}.

In Cuba, schools embraced the best thinking traditions of the most outstanding pedagogues, such as José Martí (1853-1895), who said

To educate is placing all the previous human work inside every man; it is making every man a summary of the living world until his very last day lived. It is like updating man so that they float above their time, rather than below where they won't float; it is preparing man for life" p.28).

This definition of the apostle highlights that education aims to form humans in a process that will prepare them constantly for social changes, so they can contribute to the transformation of the world for the benefit of the society which they will interact with. In that sense, and considering the contributions of contemporary pedagogy, Physical Education is a pedagogical process taking place in schools and other school-like spaces. The achievement of these goals relies on games, gymnastics, and sports, shaping the content of this discipline coherently within the National Education System (SNE). Games, because, according to Senú et al. (2020) consolidate social forms; gymnastics strengthens the body through physical exercise, and sports, because it is the most active factor of physical culture, and a social-multilateral phenomenon that contributes to the formation and development of personality, thus having a remarkable psychological and pedagogic relevance.

Although sports are attractive and impact modern society, its diverse theoretical and methodological possibilities have been overlooked. It could be considered a practice with a historical-pedagogic process of its own as part of a particular context ^{(Senú, et al., 2021)}.

The pedagogic conception of civic education is part of the Martian idea that to educate is preparing man for life as a process in which the ethical, moral, political, and legal components articulate, becoming a whole. These components integrate knowledge, feelings, skills, and values that guide, assess, and regulate the behavior of citizens living in the community, as well as the democratic participation in the construction of Cuban socialism, expressed in human sensitivity and performances of the pedagogic professionals as essential instruments of their educational work.

This educational conception of Jose Marti has become a reality in the educational work of the Cuban revolution since January 1st, 1959. The undefeated Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro, our historical leader acknowledged it during his plea known as History Will Absolve Me, in which he said that education is a non-negotiable right of humans, the people, which has been backed by the political will developed by the Communist Party of Cuba and the revolutionary government, as stated in the Constitution of Cuba. The Martian ideals expressed in the Magna Carta are summarized like this: "I want the first law of the Republic to be the cult of Cubans to the full dignity of man" ^{(Arteaga, 2020)}.

Its epistemological fundament is based on the most advanced revolutionary, anti-imperialist, and Marxist thoughts in Cuba, Latin America, and the rest of the world. It has been articulated with the ideas of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, which are part of the ethical, axiological, and humanistic approaches applied to education. Moral values intervene as a point of reference for conduct in a society, the light that signals stimuli or the prohibitions that permit man to act appropriately in everyday situations. When values clash, a moral conflict emerges. Then man is responsible for their moral choices, the preference of this or another value, according to the hierarchy of moral relationships inside the consciousness; the moral values impregnate all the general culture of society.

So that values become part of individual subjectivity and are expressed effectively in the regulation of a subject's behavior, not only he or she will need some level of information, understanding, and reflection of the contents of value, but also that such contents have a meaning to the subject, awaken feelings and emotions, or a necessity, joy, and the pleasure of living and acting, and stick to them. The education of values entails the coherent articulation of the new and the previous ^{(Odio, 2012)}.

• Values have an undeniable connection to culture.

• Values cannot be imposed but suggested.

• Educating values is an act of creation, creating is transcending.

• Some definitions of value education.

Moreover, ^{Arteaga (2020)}:

Values express a positive social significance of a phenomenon (facts, acts) as principles, norms, or representation of good, fair, and duteous with an assessing and normative character in the consciousness that regulates and guides the attitudes of individuals toward the reaffirmation of moral progress, humanistic growth, and human improvement (page 26).

Values depend on society, they vary depending on the culture, traditions, history, religion, a person's identity, and the development of their personality. They interact and create relations of subordination as part of a dialectic unity. They emerge in broad frameworks, such as humanity, or reduced spaces like the family ^{(Castañeda et al., 2022)}.

In Marti, the outer "beauty", detached from a culture of feelings that resides in love and kindness, is not a defining value of human nature. A personality, though "beautiful outside" who does not host noble feelings of human solidarity, disinterest, justice, and personal dignity, is not realized as a person, and their conduct will be rejected by the society in which they live ^{(Urgellés Castillo, de Feria Hernández, & Reyes Osorio, 2010)}.

The values that Marti teaches, cultivates, and transmits in his verse and prose are not abstract entities, but consubstantial to human activity; they integrate into a culture of reason and feelings. In his speech, he not only calls for and searches for human values, he also unveils them. But "unveiling", which is more than a continuous transit from just being to consciously being a human projection, a remission to the imagination and cultural creativity of man. In that direction, Marti is not so interested in what man is or their values, but especially the realization of man and their human nature as part of a system of dynamic and fluent values within a society. Only from this conception, they transcend and become effective. They transcend because they are social valences and apprehensive forms of social conduct turned into culture. It does not mean Marti had a Nihilist attitude toward universal values or a practicable, pragmatic, utilitarian conception of values. His work often deals with universal values, concepts, and ideas. It just means that his conception of values, due to previously explained reasons, stems from his intellect that integrates into the people's culture ^{(Pupo, Rigoberto, 2020)}.

The Martian insertion of values as attributes of human subjectivity integrated into the culture, and part of the social-cultural creativity of man, not only explains the fundaments of its transcendence in the axiology of the Maestro. He also refers to the specificity of Martian philosophy in terms of a vital, energetic speech, at the service of man and society. He also explains his visionary genius to discern the current reality from the future. He shows his great essence revealing his power to see further and dimension realities that go inadvertently before his fellows. Naturally, it not only takes place in his political thinking, which consecrated him and made him the main leader of the 1895 war but also in multiple facets of human labor. He had the capacity for human discerning, penetrating several historical personalities, and discovering paradigmatic and founding works. Marti also has validity and transcendence to values, updating the historical memory, which is creating and bringing life to the national and human identities ^{(Pupo, Rigoberto; 2020)}.

Contemporary axiology is more inclined to overlook the contrast between subjectivism and objectivism of values: values have subjective and objective aspects. Subjectivism has demonstrated the convenience of not forgetting assessing; that is, the subject's assessing activity, which is marked by psychological, sociological, and cultural conditionings. Values consist of social and individual values; when socializing, they learn (or ignore them). Objectivism has demonstrated the convenience of analyzing the characteristics of the things considered a value; values are not arbitrary or free of charge, values are always shared ^{(Verdera, 2006)}.

Today, when historical skepticism spreads and teems overseas, in the face of many attempts to deny history, values, culture, tradition, historical memory, reasoning, social empowering projects, progress, and rationality, the preservation of national identity and human identity are imperatives. Under such conditions, the Martian pedagogic program and the intrinsic ideal of rationality acquire ever-growing contemporaneity and social validity.

CONCLUSIONS

The theoretical rationale used in this research led to a reflection based on an axiological glimpse into the education of values in the future of physical culture and sports graduates.

Axiology, as the philosophy of values articulates directly to the philosophy of culture, the values become the system: man, activity as a specific type of human activity, culture, and its fundamental mediations, an essential content of culture for the physical culture and sports professionals.

Values, as an expression of the practical needs and interests of humans, and individual socialization within group dynamics, only function and become stable conducts as a concrete manifestation of physical culture and massive sports.

Value-based education of professionals should not rely on decrees or by inculcating models, however valuable they are; values must be embraced with a dialectical, flexible, inclusive, and in-context perspective.

REFERENCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS

Arteaga, N. L. C. (2020). La política cubana frente a la covid19. La educación en este contexto.Revista Boletín Redipe, 9(8), pp. 24-34. https://revista.redipe.org/index.php/1/article/view/1038

Borges-Bienes, D. I., & Acosta-Cabezas, M. (2021). El valor patriotismo y su impacto en la obra martiana.Maestro y Sociedad,18(2), pp. 688-706. https://maestroysociedad.uo.edu.cu/index.php/MyS/article/download/5367/4995/17185

Real, D. C., Hernández, D. C., & Alfaro, Y. R. (2022). VALORES: FORTALEZA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD CUBANA.UNESUM-Ciencias. Revista Científica Multidisciplinaria. ISSN 2602-8166, 6(1), pp. 65-72. https://www.sciencegate.app/document/10.47230/unesum-ciencias.v6.n1.2022.623

Rodríguez Marrero, B. (2017). La dirección por valores, componente indispensable en el Sistema de Cultura Física en Cuba. PODIUM - Revista De Ciencia Y Tecnología En La Cultura Física, 12(2), pp. 71-73. https://podium.upr.edu.cu/index.php/podium/article/view/714

Odio, C. Z. (2012). ENFOQUE HISTÓRICO CULTURAL. UNA MIRADA PSICOLÓGICA. CD de Monografías 2012. (c) 2012, Universidad de Matanzas "Camilo Cienfuegos". http://monografias.umcc.cu/monos/2012/Facultad%20de%20Ciencias%20Sociales%20y%20Humanidades/mo12195.pdf

Ortiz-Blanco, A. M., del Carmen Rodríguez-López, M., & López-Lazo, K. (2019). Confluencias entre José Martí y Fidel Castro respecto al humanismo.Maestro y Sociedad , 196-205. https://maestroysociedad.uo.edu.cu/index.php/MyS/article/view/5139

Pupo, Rigoberto. (2020). Los valores como cauces educativos en José Martí. Editora Regio, S.A. de C.V. https://elregio.com/Noticia/19d34ebc-2115-4cc0-8324-7024295412bf

Rojas-Muñoz, Y., Sierra-Barbado, C. R., & Campos-Jerez, D. (2019). La educación en valores en los alumnos de Levantamiento de Pesas. The education in valuesof the students of Weightlifting.Arrancada,19 (35), pp. 99-107. https://revistarrancada.cujae.edu.cu/index.php/arrancada/article/download/271/215/814

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Urgellés Castillo, I., de Feria Hernández, K., & Reyes Osorio, I. (2010). Aproximación metodológica para la educación valoral de los estudiantes a través de las potencialidades del pensamiento martiano en las clases de Informática. LUZ, 9(2), 10. https://luz.uho.edu.cu/index.php/luz/article/view/471

Verdera, J. C. R. (2006). Filosofía de la educación y teoría de los valores: El subjetivismo y el objetivismo en la axiología.Educació i Cultura: revista mallorquina de Pedagogia, pp. 19-36. https://ibdigital.uib.es/greenstone/collect/educacio/archives/Educacio/_i_Cultu/ra_2006v/19p019.dir /Educacio_i_Cultura_2006v19p019.pdf

Received: April 04, 2023; Accepted: May 24, 2023

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Los autores declaran no tener conflictos de intereses.

Los autores han participado en la redacción del trabajo y análisis de los documentos.