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Knowing, Understanding, Living, Dissenting and Countering: The Educational Moment in the Enhancement of Democratic Citizenship

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Abstract

Education is commonly considered to be a transformational practice that contributes both to forging the personality of individuals and to promoting social entanglements. For this reason, education always has a normative character that rests on a particular concept of what humanity and society should be. However, educational policies and practices are frequently unaware of these theoretical presuppositions, and for this reason, they frequently appear to act in a naïve and superficial manner. This is particularly the case for citizenship education, which, if superficially implemented, risks being distorted into a form of civic education that reproduces established norms and social relations, without promoting any meaningful social change. Thus, the first part of this article aims to deepen the notion of citizenship, in particular by studying what the concept of ‘consensus’ means, conceiving of it not as a synonym of social resignation, but rather as a collective conspiracy towards a common political project. Accordingly, the article defines the basic characteristics that education should always possess to effectively promote a democratic and participative citizenship education. In particular, it identifies five constitutive contrasts in relation to the ways in which information is transmitted, reasoned, emotionally perceived, and then discussed and countered both by individuals and society. The article therefore presents an overall theory of education, seen as a momentous practice of dialogue and common action that opens the way for a democracy in progress.

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Notes

  1. For Aristotle, human nature is characterised by the conjunction (trìton) of materiality (ile) and form (morphé). For this reason, there would be an extremely close relationship between the soul (animation principle, origin of movement) and body insofar as the soul is the essence of a body and, at the same time, the soul could not exist without being embodied within a body. To clarify this, Aristotle provides a good example, referring to the eye. In this case, the soul would be sight while the retina would be the material element.

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  1. Public University of Navarra (UPNA), Campus de Arrosadia, 31006, Pamplona, Spain

    Paolo Scotton

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  1. Paolo Scotton
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Scotton, P. Knowing, Understanding, Living, Dissenting and Countering: The Educational Moment in the Enhancement of Democratic Citizenship. Stud Philos Educ 39, 71–84 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09699-4

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