Educating to Democracy: New Itineraries for Social Justice

Abstract

The question about education, and about which model of education, belongs to society and moves from it, as well as the answer must go back to society again: education to complexity, critical thinking, responsibility for choices are all possible answers. In other words, we comprehend education as active citizenship, and by citizenship we mean a condition based on respect for oneself, respect for the others and the rules of any community. It is a cultural attitude built on values such as civil and political commitment, and an ethical dimension that implies the conviction that without choice and responsibility there can be no authentic social justice; it is a sense of belonging to democracy and democratic practice as well, where we believe democracy to be the result of opposition first, mediation later. This should be the task of the public School system, and to accomplish this task it is necessary to draw on the cultural richness that comes from its pluralism: this can be done by trained teachers, available to comparison, who know how to dismantle and reassemble disciplinary knowledge and soft skills in an epistemologically correct way, in order to meet the diversified learning needs, providing tools for interaction with reality. This kind of School, therefore, must be considered as an ethical place of education and citizenship, which guides change and transformative processes, inspired by new cultural, social, psycho-pedagogical and organizational models: a School which, as a public service, is already part of a pedagogical and political project.

Keywords

• School
• Participatory democracy
• Social Justice
• Active citizenship
• Teacher education