Education in the age of mass culture: the dialectics of cultural identity and social conformism

The article examines the contradiction between the function of the education system to develop critical thinking and the unifying influence of mass culture, which levels cultural diversity and imposes standard patterns of behavior. The analysis is based on the theoretical works of leading philosophers and sociologists (T. Adorno, J. Baudrillard, M. Foucault, P. Bourdieu, etc.) in the mainstream of the sociology of culture and socio-political philosophy, including criticism of the cultural industry and the concept of symbolic domination. As a result of the theoretical analysis, a dialectical tension was revealed between the task of educating an autonomous, culturally identical personality and the pressure of mass culture, which generates social conformism. It is substantiated that overcoming this contradiction requires a targeted strengthening of critical and reflexive practices in education in order to preserve cultural identity and develop independent thinking