This article seeks to answer a basic question: Is it possible to include the excluded? We understand the excluded as new social sectors, which are different from those we describe as marginal or exploited.  Rather, these sectors are formed by the large and growing groups of people that contemporary society seems able to ignore. The article starts by analyzing what this new social condition implies to decision makers, and raises new questions.  Do we want to live in a society that excludes 25 or 30% of its more needy population?  Are we capable of learning to live together, as Jacques Delors asks in his UNESCO report?  The ethical dilemma implied by these questions leads to a reflection on the technical-political dimension of inequality in regards to education.  Tedesco and Porter open a dialogue that departs from a macro vision (including the use of new technology and the opening of new fields in educational policies) and goes into the micro dimension of specific contexts, from those where people have some educational autonomy and project capacity, to those where people find themselves in situations of anonymity and social dissolution.  Learning to live together implies taking on responsibility for the other, and of knowing the other. In order to break with the social determinism that can lead to fatalist scenarios, it is important to understand that educational success or failure is a systemic phenomenon that depends on a multiple of variables.  Governments have responded to the complexity of the problem with ‘objective’ measures that principally affect the material. In this article we support the idea that an attempt to bring about a greater recognition of the subjective dimension is missing in current educational policy.  To achieve this we identify certain characteristics that various studies have shown as basic requirements to confront the problem: project capacity, narrative capacity and enhanced self-confidence.

Key words: Educational disadvantage, equal education, educational policies.