Suicide and loss of meaning in modernity: the educational role of the school in the formation of life narratives

• Autor: Arevalos, Dario Hernán
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2025
• Institución: Universidad Marcelino Champagnat
• Repositorio: Revista educa UMCH
• Lenguaje: español
• OAI Identifier: oai:revistas.umch.edu.pe:article/331
• Enlace del recurso: https://revistas.umch.edu.pe/index.php/EducaUMCH/article/view/331
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: suicidio; modernidad; juventud; educación; Educación; Suicidio; suicide; modernity; youth; education; Education; Suicide

This article analyzes the relationship between suicide and the sociocultural construction of pain in modernity from a sociological and educational perspective. The objective is to interpret this phenomenon not as an individual act or isolated pathology but as an expression of the collective suffering produced by inequality, social fragmentation, and the loss of meaning that characterize contemporary societies. Through a qualitative theoretical-documentary approach, contributions from classical and contemporary authors—Durkheim, Marx, Halbwachs, and Elias—were reviewed and systematized, along with recent studies on youth and education. The findings reveal that suicide represents a form of social pain linked to structural and affective transformations of modernity, which affect the construction of vulnerable subjectivities and erode community ties. From an educational standpoint, the school is proposed as a key space for the symbolic elaboration of suffering and the creation of life narratives that restore belonging and hope. Therefore, the school’s educational role is reaffirmed as a place of care, recognition, and the reconstruction of human meaning.