Education for survival

This article presents a critical analysis of the aims pursued by educational policies in Mexico based on two discursive fragments: a UNESCO report (2022) and an opinion article published in Expansión (2025).Using Critical Discourse Analysis and the theoretical and methodological tools provided by Jäger, Fairclough and Rivera, the study examines how both texts construct an understanding of education oriented toward survival in an uncertain labour context, rather than toward the development of critical thinking.The analysis shows that both the international and the national discourses share a neoliberal stance that conceives education as a mechanism for adaptation, lifelong reskilling and employability within flexible and precarious labour markets.The texts naturalize uncertainty, competition and individual responsibility for career success or failure, while silencing structural inequalities and the voices of teachers, students and excluded communities.The comparison between the fragments reveals that UNESCO's international discourse, although framed in terms of human rights, is translated by Expansión into explicitly productivist and business-oriented terms, reinforcing the subordination of education to market demands.The article concludes that this logic constrains the possibility of imagining alternative educational projects aimed at social justice and the transformation of the existing order, and argues for an education that prioritizes critical reflection, understanding of the roots of inequality and the construction of collective alternatives for a dignified life.