Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The different professions and specialties instruct to the professional and specialist, but general education contributes profoundly to the self-formation of human beings. Without human formation, education degenerates into mere training, and knowledge in mere information. We could think on a concentric method, to use an expression of Hostos, but for different purposes. The center from which we must start in general education is our own culture, the Puerto Rican culture, in our case. From here, hence in concentric circles as prospects to its greatest extent, the Universe. Towards the end of the article, the author identifies transdisciplinary strategies and points towards to a free and creative spirit to avoid falling into monotonous routines within education.

Science always contacts or overlaps with ethics, aesthetics and politics. In today's world they are mutually infiltrated, complemented and sometimes confronted.. They show concrete manifestations of the inextricability they have with each other. However, they are not the same. Their basic purposes and procedures are different for each one. Ethics, politics and science each have distinctive inherent elements that constitute them. In specific science activities there are underlying concepts and assumptions that are the basis of projects, whether they are research, education, publising or institutional management These assumptionsy are often left only implicit, even though their discussion would clarify the scope of science, including those aspects related to ethics and politics. Several of these assumptions are discussed in a framework that highlights the mutually supportive relationships that share science, ethics and the practice of democracy. The necessary development in Latin America is a kind of development focused on the needs and ideals of the people, as individuals and as societies, one that explicitly takes into account ethics, aspirations and material well-being in all the initiatives that pretend to reach a form of integral human development. The development we want is a legitimate, integral and sustainable development. To drive it is essential that people rely on the exercise of philosophy and science, along with other processes with which we build legitimacy.

After a revision of the undergraduate curriculum of the Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico in the year 2005-06, it was established, as a requisite for the students of Natural Sciences, to take six credits of general education in their fields of study. Those courses have to be offered by the Faculty of General Studies. In order to satisfy said requirement, our Department developed a seminar denominated "Current Controversies in the Biological Sciences". The course discusses controversial topics in Biology and their scientific, technological, social, ethical, and humanistic relevance within a national and global context. It also establishes connections between the topics discussed and other disciplines of knowledge. Additionally, the course provides the space for the development of a thematic investigation regarding these debates, within an interdisciplinary frame. This course gains pertinence in face of the globalization phenomenon and the easy access to information, which calls for a revision of generally accepted paradigms. The article will discuss the virtues of the seminar, how the main objectives of a general education course are met, the challenge it provides to both the student and professor, and its impact on the integral development of the student.

There has been much debate in recent times of social responsibility as an ethical dimension that every organization or institution must have as its vision and must promote in their daily business (Vallaeys, 2008). More so, it is expected that Universities, complex and diverse establishments, comply with their social commitment; not fulfilling their own interests but rather taking into consideration the social necessities of its community (Sánchez Martínez, 2010). Therefore, an integrated educational system must possess a balance between diverse human realities and the different environments that promote and enable people to be educated. This implies a process of recuperating the role of higher learning institutions as it relates to autonomy, democracy, accessibility, and human emancipation. These are all components of curriculum that emphasizes in the general studies, in order to promote social responsibility. In this article we will discuss how important it is for the University to provide an education that forms autonomous individuals that are critical and freethinking. Ultimately, that it constructs an individual within the university that reflects upon their social responsibility, one that is framed on the ethics and solidarity that is expected from the university citizen.

Globalization today is very powerful in technology and economics, less significant in culture, and with very little effect in politics and social fields. Every day is expanding faster (turboglobalization), increases its unifying capacity, and reveals to us as uncontrollable and unintelligible, thus generating fear and disorientation. Its genealogy must be established to prove that globalization is just a human product, making easier the empowerment of a wider part of humanity over this already very old phenomenon. Although imperceptible during millenniums, humankind has always been global at least in some extent and therefore, despite of its geographical differences, it still remains as a single species. With the raise of Modernity, globalization generated violent colonizations and imperialisms. Europe and afterwards the West had the leading role, which became even more evident after the Industrial Revolution. But today the world hegemony has changed, and from the globalization metamorphosis, it has become imperative to analyze contemporary phenomenas such as the "clash of civilizations", the "risk society", the reduction of cultural diversity, the "single thought", the post2008 crisis...

This academic tale tells the story of a social psychology professor that one day decides to become a writer, but, not having enough will power, nor an adequate technical background, moreover not having a single personality trait helping this happen, he decides his students will write autoethnographical narratives, hoping that at least this will necessarily compel him to practice what he preaches. Along the road, he inducts another professor, making feel him less alone for a while, however she is somewhat more reliable and happens to write an autoethnographic story, moreover, as a partial happy ending for this story, she gets one of her Ph.D. students to write an autoethnographic thesis. Meanwhile, he cannot write a single line, which drives him to develop a series of arguments on writing and science to justify to what the hell he has been devoting his time that finally end in a paper he writes, with much help, for Revista Umbral.

In this work, different aspects of transdiciplinarity that are related to the practice of counseling at the university context are addressed. A reflection upon the functions that are performed by counseling professionals, as members of the docent component at the University of Puerto Rico, is presented. It also discusses how the transdisciplinary point of view provides and relates to the counseling processes. Finally, the development of more collaborative spaces between counseling docent professionals and professors who teach at class halls is proposed, in a way that acknowledges the contributions that both counseling and transdisciplinarity can bring to the integral development of university students.

The concept of Orientalism, examined by Edward Said (1978) in his classical work Orientalism, has multiple ramifications in the cultural sphere. In particular, films can become an effective instrument of propaganda for disseminating the basic tenets of Orientalism, which inevitably shapes the public‘s perception of the Muslim community. This article presents an analysis of the paradigms of Orientalism manifested in El Cid: La leyenda, the animated adaptation of the life and deeds of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar "El Cid".