ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the emancipatory aim of education and some of the paradoxes characterizing the implementation of critical pedagogies. It reinterprets the relationship between autonomy and dependence from a dialogical and process-oriented rhythmical perspective by considering such contradictions from an epistemological point of view. It explores the meaning of temporal alienation and focuses in particular on phenomena such as social acceleration and urgency. The chapter considers the impact of those phenomena in education through two emerging trends (accelerated learning and slow education). The tyranny of time in capitalist society remains therefore a central dimension of Marxian analysis and a recurring theme in sociological studies focusing on the role played by the rigidity, the coercion and the regularity imposed through the temporal framework of industrialization. References to social theory of time are marginal in educational theory, and so far, empirical research is limited to higher education.
