SOURCE: VIVALSCUOLA
"By any means necessary ..." The school as a common good. Reflections on the sidelines of the book of Girolamo De Michele Alessandro Cartoons
difficult to find a comprehensive definition of a book like that of Girolamo De Michele, The school belongs to everyone, Minimum Fax, 2010, full of information and data not domesticated but also capable of interpretation global world and the times we are experiencing.
The most obvious is that whilst this is a manual for defense and resistance to the order of existing things, the book does not grant anything to the prevailing doom the fate of the Italian school. Indeed, the interpretation of the author, the school is still able to play an important role in training for citizenship, integration and social redemption if only one wanted to leave the order of the discourse of "de-legitimization in place"
School has, therefore, De Michele, a central place in society that it is constitutive throughout the body to defend and promote social horizon of a revival of that function of civilization that only the knowledge in modern societies can play.
"Education is not only a fundamental right - I would even say the fundamental right, because in the learning society in which we live is not the quality of life, but life itself is called into question the structural illiteracy or return" The role of knowledge What then is at stake in the book by De Michele, what is at stake is precisely the political and democratic knowledge, its status, its consistency, the corollary of its Indeed, its possible obsolescence, preservation, decreased or reconfiguration in the current political and institutional conditions. Around the school, therefore, not playing a game among other things, but 'the' crucial match: "Education is a shared resource, like water and the environment for the common good - the common good of the community 's human being - you know the "
However, this" good "is now potentially less safe, less and less the result of a social contract and a collective consensus, then always less common and less public.
The author explains how we arrived at this through a series of historical and political analysis that combine in an original data sociology of statistics and political economy. Education (and educational models) are therefore not in a crisis as such, as would have us believe, but are in crisis because the company that produces them is itself in crisis, a crisis that has values, governance, credibility.
"The educational institution is located at a crossroads: either learn to play the game according to new rules, or fold up and fade away, having burned the bridges, the fort of their traditional knowledge, refusing contact with the new . Close again in the great wall and wait for the so-called barbarians' The challenge of complexity In any case respond to the changing society and economy in the face of technological changes which radically altered the characteristics of the work and its function, the school, and his government, taking in the knowledge society that we are going through a strategic function. Certainly the school can not just entrust tasks of training, how would you like someone, but also the tasks of socialization and training of critical thinking and citizenship.
"
The school is a kind of para professional institute that through a cognitive apprenticeship provides not only knowledge but also the workshop in which to apply the knowledge and skills learned, not the instrument to produce value, but the value itself (...) At the same time, the school held a variety of functions that the crisis has made it necessary disciplinary institutions' The school becomes the center of socialization, replacing often the family, said the children psychologically, it becomes true social worker, and his informed about the "possible uses". E 'in this direction that contradicted the minister Gelmini Michele De declares in no uncertain terms "that the school is a social safety net. Plays a role as substitute, without which the whole society would collapse. And the place at no cost "The
challenges of the near future will be played from cognitive capital and that the use of this through the school and his government will do to society. Because, explains De Michele, or see an upgrading of the public school and its power to equip citizens, all citizens, to face the world ahead of them, or assist in its gradual 'sale' would be set up, among others, to crank out "a class conditional inadequate to play an active role in the world of work and full citizenship."
Choices Italian E 'perfectly clear, therefore, that the direction in which it is moving with the Italian school Last Gelmini reform, but not only is this second that privatization, breaks, fragments and cognitive capital disqualifies him as a resource to social goods. In the scenarios that draws De Michele, through analysis of the 2001 OECD project "Schooling for Tomorrow" is perceived clearly the crux of the choice made of Italian:
a) extension of the market model,
b) improving the digital divide (separation between who can and can not gain access to new technologies),
c) the state of meltdown (catastrophe) where the identity crisis of the body decent connecting the loss of strength of the contractual relations with the consequent implosion of the public education system.
"In the short term this crisis reinforces the power of national political authorities, while the long term the crisis is still no solution. The sense of crisis becomes acute in poorer areas, while local communities with the greatest educational systems" seek to protect themselves and extend its autonomy by the national. "Finally, the private interest is intensifying in the education market." delegitimization and pedagogical authoritarianism But how do you move "culturally" against the notorious scenes that we have just explained, how you can cause the breakdown social and cultural heritage of this bitter potion that has synthesized the disappearance of the right to decent and quality education for all? The author of The school of all is explained with effective analysis that those who live in schools can not fail to compare with her daily existence, and then recognize as true. First, the orchestration of a campaign to discredit (the school, teachers and school culture) in the press, not only of the regime, which has crafted an emergency situation which would destabilize certainties and social rights and to implement solutions-emergency authoritarian.
With the complicity of some self-styled journalists the Italian school has been covered, let me, to say, shit, even creative (because of all fantastic and without serious evidence with reality) in order to prepare the ground to the "epoch-making reforms." As an example, see the controversy over the apron, the caretakers of many more police on bullying, on recruitment easy, lazy etc on. But they are wrong, it shows us De Michele, to consider epiphenomena, or amenities, these interventions whose purpose was precisely to bomb the front before the attack, and never metaphor of war has proven more effective.
pedagogical authoritarianism, for example, as a cultural product of this climate of cultural and educational emergency is the antidote to any model education that has the critics and the growing power of the court its focal point. Not the other way have cultural slogan of the time Gelmini: from Creative Intelligence, the return to authority, 5 in the conduct, on the primacy of content. A deep analogy between the catechism turns out to fascist and that of our school reform: Because
"Every school system that did not include among its aims the training of minds capable of exercising common sense criticism of the existing state of affairs - have the courage to know - is potentially fascist. " Projecting nostalgia in the future There is also those who have not experienced the atmosphere of growing illiberal, the air of barracks with the inescapable corollary of the end of each collegiality that now prevails in schools of all levels. A winding system of suspicion and control states in institutions, endorsed by the decrees on raising Brunetta disciplinary sanctions for civil servants. The aim is to do away with democracy, debate and collegiality, the supreme evil of those regimes created by the Enlightenment in which the claim disappears organic whole that embodies the general will. Indeed, if the general will is born from conflict, the dialectic of positions and from their clash of different interests, then it is clear that the situation is back quo ante is one of the aims of the reform Gelmini. Put in an effort "organic" the wheel of time backwards;
- or, that is the same project the nostalgia in the future - is to adjust the size to conquer even the rioters to restructuring. And yet,
"Every conception of the school which refuses to grant the right to criticize, or at least to question, to all those involved in education is potentially fascist." Within this project can not non esserci spazio per il ritorno al nozionismo come terreno dei contenuti “certi e sicuri” adeguati a un sapere «da spezzettare analiticamente, e riassumere in catechismi». Anche qui il fine è adeguare il modello educativo a un sapere che non forma che non dà gli strumenti per leggere la realtà, ma fornisce solo un pacchetto di nozioni che si pretende adeguato a una società complessa. E tuttavia: «una scuola che rifiuti di insegnare a imparare e ritorni alla centralità dei contenuti, oltre che profondamente arretrata e inadeguata, è potenzialmente fascista».
In conclusione, quello che si cela dietro le riforme, dietro gli appelli alla responsabilità e alla disponibilità al cambiamento is the systematic dismantling of the public education system earned more than half a century of battles, and against democracy. Only if all the employees of the school, explains De Michele, will be able to relate to the world of jobs and the lives of others (all other "domains") to stop the massive social restructuring in place, then this result may be avoided. But we must do so by any means necessary.
http://lapoesiaelospirito.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/vivalascuola-66/
