Some Considerations on the Educational “Situation”, Between Performativity and Commitment

Abstract

Considering the distortion of meaning to which the word lends itself in the neo-liberal use of the expression “stay-at/in-situation” with reference to school and educational contexts, my brief analysis will focus on the meaning the word originally assumed in the phenomenological-existential vocabulary. Here, in fact, ‘situation’ does not only identify the necessary anchorage to the already-given contingency, but mainly describes the relation of meaning between subject and reality. In the first case, the prescription of being constrained (even morally) by the real prevails, which corresponds to the action-outcome nexus; in the second case, intersubjectivity as a field of forces that creates the changing meanings of the real prevails, which corresponds to the ability to project oneself. In the first case, reality can be described by indicators that measure it, based on which it is necessary to measure the expected outcome. In the second case, reality consists of elements with different meanings for each of the contributors, the mutual influence of which determines reality itself. The same discourse also applies to the confusion between result and project: project, phenomenologically understood, does not correspond to the result, but to the broader horizon that maintains the relation between different existential and social situations.

Keywords

• situation
• phenomenological-existential pedagogy
• relationship
• one's own project
• educational ethics