Dialectics of Education

Guiding the reflection in this essay is an idea that has been floating around in my head for some time. At first glance, it can be expressed as follows: that education should be functionally oriented towards a conception of man understood in the entirety of his own specificity, i.e. capable of harmonising within himself – and respecting his own autonomous process of inner growth – sensitivity and reason through a particularly lively and intense relationship with the culture and social environment that surrounds him. In order to clearly focus on the main implications arising from the problematic issues highlighted and to direct the analysis along the dialectical trajectory which is the one most suited to it, it is first of all opportune to start from some etymologically relevant traits of the concept of education. I will then proceed to the gradual composition of an interdisciplinary framework that will be articulated, in a comparative key, on two different levels of observation – the synthesis of which will open up, in conclusion, a proactive horizon for the argumentation as a whole: the first level, exquisitely sociological, will make constant reference to the systemic-constructivist theory of society, while the second, with a historical-anthropological profile, will follow a critical-dialectical research guideline. It is precisely in carefully unfolding this jagged weave within the framework of a dialectical scheme of the whole, that, without claiming to provide definitive answers or solutions, I intend nonetheless to propose a precise contribution of a strategic nature to the much broader and more complex debate on the modalities and processes that can effectively foster – in the course of educational and/or training action, and despite the growing structural drive towards generalisation – the evolutionary potential that is now more present than ever in individual human specificity.