Going Against the Threat of Defuturization: Citizenship Education and Agency Promotion in a Complex and Ecological Perspective

Abstract

The complexity that characterizes our society has made it more difficult to interpret and deal with reality. Added to this is the difficulty of planning one’s own life path and being active agents. The highest price is paid by our physical and psychological integrity, which gives way to forms of existential discomfort that increasingly affect young people. It is necessary to build social, political and cultural networks capable of dealing with existential discomfort. From this point of view, education must become a moment of «cultivation and care» in order to deal with the poverty of skills that limits our agency. The challenge is to rethink school curricula that, starting from the promotion of cognitive, emotional, social and cultural competencies, outline the principles of an education capable of allowing being to flourish in all its possible existential directions.

Keywords

• Active citizenship
• Agency
• Ecological thinking
• Complexity