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This article proposes a learning content analysis model proposed in a curriculum. It questions the educational purposes of a Chilean language and communication textbook based on Young's (2008; 2009) proposal regarding the cognitive value of knowledge that empowers students. The emancipatory objective of a school curriculum would result from the structuring and organization of said knowledge. What is knowledge that empowers? What are the intellectual activities in which the teaching of this knowledge involves students? In this contribution, we conceptualize knowledge that empowers by referring to the relationships between two processes of generalization of experience, as outlined by Vygotsky (1934/1997) in his discussion of the relationships between everyday concepts and scientific concepts. Although with important limitations, our data analysis highlights that in order to analyze the emancipatory potential of a school curriculum, it is necessary to take into account the way it organizes and structures knowledge. Throughout the article, we show that empowering knowledge is developed through teaching-learning activities that involve the person in a process of theoretical generalization. Finally, we highlight the contradictions between the emancipatory purposes that are announced by its designers and the way in which knowledge is organized and structured in the mother tongue teaching curriculum.

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