WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #34 - Education as a practice of freedom - Paola Perullo (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 As I am about to write this article, the text of the teaching

guidelines, by Valditara and Galli della Loggia, has been published on
the website of the Ministry of Education (and merit), in which Giuseppe
Valditara announces that he wants to open a consultation between the
commission that drafted it and the unions, professional associations and
those of parents and students. ---- The process will serve to start the
consequent adoption of the New National Guidelines for the curriculum of
nursery school and the first cycle of education, which will replace from
the 2026/2027 school year those adopted in November 2012 by the then
Minister of Education Francesco Profumo, under the Monti government. The
model that emerges is a fearful acceleration towards a concept of
reactionary school, founded on homeland, repression and discipline,
inspired by a dystopian version of a book Cuore sovranista. The news is
reported by the "Manifesto" in an article by Luciana Cimino on
03/13/2025. In light of these indications on which it must be said,
fortunately, controversy and resistance have already begun by many
teachers, what seems evident I believe is the attempt to discourage and
erase any critical and dissonant thought on the teaching profession. We
have been witnessing this attack on our profession for some time now,
with the precise will to erase with a stroke of the sponge, decades of
commitment and passion towards a progressive pedagogy respecting the
minds of children and young people.

For all this I want to bring the example of Bell Hooks (United States
1952-2021), with his book "Teaching to Transgress", to say, with his
words, that where it seems impossible to assume the vision of education
as a practice of freedom, through committed pedagogy, in reality it
becomes a stimulating challenge to promote an alternative that goes
beyond the state of things. Bell Hooks starts from her experience as a
discriminated student, because she is black, and from her perception of
school, to become passionate about what teaching can determine, through
relationships, respecting everyone's thoughts and participation.

"Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else's
image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could
forget that self and through ideas, reinvent myself."

She tells us that she comes to focus on the fundamental aspect of
teaching, on relationships and communication, precisely because her
teachers lacked these skills. She felt that they taught without passion,
that teaching did not realize them as human beings and they ended up
taking on a controlling role aimed at domination and the exercise of
power... "In these contexts I learned a lot about the type of teacher I
did not want to become." Rebelling against those models, the exercise
she did was to imagine ways in which teaching and the learning
experience could have been different...   "The reflection that arose
from my experience as a student in uninvolving courses, allowed me to
imagine not only that the classroom could be an exciting place, but that
this exhilaration could consist of and even stimulate serious
intellectual engagement." And since it is difficult for this to be the
result achieved by a single teacher, those who teach must truly value
the importance of everyone's presence, because... "Enthusiasm is
generated by collective effort." When she began writing the book
"Teaching to Transgress," she was convinced she was addressing teachers,
but then she realized she was also writing for students. Her aim, in my
opinion successful, is to counteract the disinterest and apathy that
very often characterize the way in which teachers and students consider
teaching, and she says:

"I celebrate teaching that makes transgressions possible, a movement
against and beyond borders, to be able to think, rethink and create new
visions. It is that movement that makes education the practice of
freedom." In her research, two figures emerge that she considers
intellectual guides, the thinker Paulo Freire and the master Thich Nhat
Hanh.

Paulo Freire ( 1921-1997 ), was a Brazilian pedagogue who conceived
education as a tool for liberation. For Freire, education is a political
act and must encourage active participation in the struggle for social
liberation.

The master Thich Nhat Hanh was a spiritual guide at a global level, a
poet and a peace activist ( Vietnam 1926-2022 ).

Bell Hooks takes from Freire the thought of education as a practice of
freedom and the necessary participation of all, in which everyone is
aware of contributing to the construction of knowledge, through
relationships with others. As for Thich Nhat Hanh's thought, it offers
the possibility of attributing to pedagogical action, a dimension of
integrity that unites body and mind and therefore promotes well-being,
first of all that of the teacher who must self-realize in order to
teach. In this regard, Bell Hooks dedicates a chapter of his book to the
relationship between eros, eroticism and pedagogical process. Starting
from the need to enter the classroom "whole" and not as "disembodied
spirits", to... "understand that eros is a force that enhances our
general effort of self-realization, that can provide an epistemological
basis that informs how we know what we know, allows teachers and
students to use this energy in the classroom in ways that stimulate
discussion and critical imagination".

Bell Hooks thus gives us an image of learning and of the classroom where
it takes place, where the opportunity opens up to work for freedom, to
ask ourselves and our companions for "an openness of mind and heart that
allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to cross
boundaries, to transgress. This is education as a practice of freedom."

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