#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Italy, FDCA: Il Cantiere anno 2022 n. 8 - Towards a Modern and Libertarian Public School - Alessandro Granata (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 In the article in the previous issue, I tried to address the question of how

libertarian and progressive pedagogy were now assumed as a collective heritage,
although teachers and pupils often ignore their provenance and parentage from the
various schools of thought. And I mentioned how these methodologies were applied
in public schools, albeit not always in a completely coherent way. Now I would
like to focus attention on how libertarians and progressives might approach the
question of the here and now in public school. The age-old question of what to do
(to be consistent with one's ideas). I would like to underline that it is not a
question of carrying out any type of anarchic, libertarian or progressive
catechesis, it is not a question of propagating ideas, but rather reflecting on
how to consciously and definitively assume them and apply them consistently in a
daily working method, and above all, there I want to reiterate it here and now in
public school. It will be said that a thankless and impossible job, I recognize
that it takes the patience of the spider, it is primarily a question of creating
interconnected networks of educators, pedagogues, teachers and programmatically
discussing common strengths, beyond the specific characteristics that can connote
each individuality to school of thought. Overcoming the inertial resistances that
characterize the teaching staff accustomed to ritual and somewhat stale
confrontations, alone and only in the collegial bodies (often emptied, by the
management action, by a real decision-making power) and in a completely passive
way. In a nutshell, it is a question of reconnecting with the colleague and
colleague who often acts at our side in a somewhat tired, mechanical and
unreflective way and rekindling the will to communicate and design outside of the
canonical occasions. Rekindling creativity certainly cannot be limited to the
various Pon projects or to the standard training offer programmed in joint action
with the possibilities of the territory. Creativity that least of all should
close and decline in the narrow space of a classroom with our class. The school
is a community, we must revitalize this community starting from colleagues, find
ways to get together, discuss over ideological and trade union affiliations but
with a common working method. Re-question teaching, evaluation, standardized
evaluation grids, think concretely how to replace the numerical grade in favor of
an analytical and synthetic judgment, create learning environments that are
increasingly favorable to didactic action and formative dialogue, etc., etc. .
I could be told that the public school is a state school; therefore, there will
always be a limit to the implementation of an integral libertarian education, the
real and the most intransigent among libertarian educators and teachers could
object that the libertarian school must necessarily be done outside the state school.
But the state school is also a public school. Two sides of the same coin. Two
aspects of the same reality. On this topic I would invite you to read Rino
Ermini, Libertarian Pedagogy Possible Paths (1)
"... Public school and state school. For me they are two completely different
concepts even if today, in large part, overlap and in the collective imagination
they are the same thing. The public school should be the set of structures,
tools, initiatives, of the organization that a society of free and equal, without
exploitation or oppression, based on absolute social justice, gives itself to
provide for a part of the education and instruction of its members, of all
members: children, teens, adults, males and females. I say "provide for a part"
because it is desirable and inevitable that "education and upbringing" are built
through numerous channels. "Public school" is therefore a linguistic expression
rich in contents on which today we can and must reason, which must be pursued,
but whose realization and definition will proceed hand in hand with the emergence
and affirmation of a society different from current"
Historically, anarchists and libertarians have invested in the creation of
schools wherever it was possible and feasible (for example Louise Michel among
the Parisian communards or later in Caledonia in the place of her deportation,
supporting for the first time in history the local revolts of indigenous peoples) -
And often forced by necessity they created their own schools, because education
in certain historical contexts was reserved for the upper classes or managed
entirely by religious institutions; like the great example of Francisco Ferrer y
Guardia's Escuela Moderna, founded in 1901 with the aim of "educating the working
class in a rational, secular and non-coercive way; therefore, the first
libertarians had to somehow forcibly emancipate their schools from the state
ones. There was no state school for everyone and everyone. There was simply a
school for the elites. And it was a school strongly characterized by religious
education. There was no room for the daughters and sons of workers in these schools.
But nowadays? Does it still make sense to dedicate yourself to building a school
outside of school? Isn't it rather more useful to focus on what little or how
much there might be in everyone's school?
In our day, what to do? How to act in this historical phase and in this context
where we still have a public school (and it is not entirely obvious that in the
next decades to come this will be the case, given the increasingly affirmation of
a corporate and neoliberal vocation), a public school where is the pre-eminent
vocation still libertarian and progressive?
Now that there is still a state school, but even before that it is public, it is
necessary to immediately begin to re-weave these networks of teachers and
educators in order to ally and counteract their neoliberal drift in the first
place; before this school, (still very progressive by its historical derivation),
but under constant attacks of the privatist, elitist model, is bureaucratized and
subjugated by those forces that have a conservative and neoliberal vision of
society. Today it may already be too late. Let's get connected, let's unite,
let's fight, so that the school is ever more public, more open, inclusive and
libertarian as possible! Let's cultivate together the vision and planning of a
future for a society that sees humanity economically emancipate itself from the
yoke of social exploitation. We practice didactic models that build this future.

1) Rino Ermini, Libertarian Pedagogy Possible paths blob: https:
//mega.nz/9123002c-a0ea-4e359ad6-2b3db8397a0f
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