Sergio Tramma, Critical thought as lifeline in the stormy dead calm of educating in contemporary times

The crisis of the past years has resulted, in addition to other consequences, in the appearance and/or consolidation of some positions definable as neo-compassionate neoliberalism, which take the conceptual and operative forms of virtuous and solidaristic communitarianism, of social inclusion that excludes the antagonistic conflict from its own horizon of possibilities, of socially responsible capitalism. At the same time, within common social education, and also partially in the formal and official one, the main reference subject seems now to be “the entrepreneur of the self”, capable of “freely” build his own life path, even in critical stages and situations of existence, and attentive, as individual, to others’ fragility.
What consequences has all this brought to education? The progressive adjustment to the existence out of conviction and/or survival? The emphasis, towards multiple directions, of “pedagogy of exhortation”?
The refuge in the testimony of the pedagogy of antagonism and irreducibility?
This essay aims at reflecting upon such issues, trying to understand whether there are areas of sense and of project possibilities for a critical (plausible and useful) thought about investigating, making and thinking education in the social sphere of contemporaneity.

 

 

Published on: Educating in the social N. 25 New Series – Year XIII 2017