To base education for critical action on the current situation, this article returns to the critical theory of society proposed by the founders of the Frankfurt School. We briefly describe the Marxist bases of critical thought and the main scientific challenges proposed by the first members of this school. These challenges include a critique of instrumental rationality, which was used to denounce the link between science and production systems, and the development of negative or vigilant thinking from which could stem revolutionary potential against any form of control. This intellectual approach, which turns thought into action, enables the critique of capitalist society to be taken to the limit, as reflected in the work of Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse explains dialectics of liberation in which education, which is understood as a political practice, has a preparatory function. The scope of this position leads us to question the role of our educational model, which forms part of a basic variable of the predominant ideological pattern, and thus also of the propagation of a one-dimensional society.