COMMODIFICATION OF EDUCATION AND CRISIS OF HUMANITY: CHALLENGES FOR THE INCLUSION OF STUDENTS WITH CHRONIC ILLNESSES

Abstract

This article examines how the commodification of education and the consolidation of performative logic in contemporary educational policies generate a crisis of humanity that directly affects the inclusion of students with chronic illnesses. Drawing on the work of Stephen J. Ball, Jean Baudrillard, and Joan C. Tronto, it argues that neoliberalism reshapes the meaning of education by prioritizing measurable performance, competitiveness, and accountability. Ball shows that educational policies produce subjectivities and establish regimes of performativity that marginalize care practices. Baudrillard highlights how indicators and rankings cease to represent educational reality and instead symbolically construct it, creating a simulacrum of quality. Tronto repositions care as the ethical and democratic foundation of institutional life. Within this framework, the vulnerability of students with chronic illnesses is also politically produced, as their need for attention and flexibility conflicts with systems driven by comparative efficiency. The article concludes that effective inclusion requires reorganizing schools around collective responsibility for care.