A school for emancipation

Abstract

In this contribution (transcription of his video intervention) Philippe Meirieu takes up the themes covered in his latest book, A school for emancipation (Armando, 2020). From a historical and epistemological point of view, Meirieu takes up four divisive factors that crossed the New Education movement in the twentieth century: the “ideal school” vs. the “single school”, free group practices vs. the most regulated group practices, the “natural” methods (Freinet) vs. the methods that prefer the use of structured materials (Montessori), the absolute respect of the boy vs. the need to introduce “fruitful” constraints.
From a philosophical point of view, Meirieu recalls how pedagogy, as a theoretical practice, contains three dimensions: the aims, the knowledge and the practices. What makes such a pedagogy is the consistency between these three aspects. The intervention ends with the proposal of some practices on which it is urgent to work: practices to make the school a place of deceleration, the construction of attentional devices, a “demanding” evaluation to overcome the “banking” evaluation prevailing today, the construction the collective (the school is a place where you learn together), the centrality of culture as a good that can be shared.