This Chapter identifies and describes, both from a logical and from an historical point of view, two structural contradictions that affect public education in the world in general and in the European area in particular. The first one qualifies our critical perspective and points to the concept and social reality of “exclusive universalisms” impacting on the way we deal with both identities and citizenships. The second one references classical critical theory approaches while offering new explanatory insights derived from the first. A third Section translates the logical and historical discussion into a phenomenological description of the subsequent teachers’ working condition in today’s school system. In the final Section we draw conclusions on the lack of awareness about the exclusivist fallacy in emancipatory pedagogies and the resulting theoretical and practical impasses this engendered.