Preamble

This Manifesto arises from concern about the current re-emergence of religious and ideological fundamentalisms, ethnic radicalisms, sovereignist and identity-based nationalisms, and new totalitarian impulses.

In the face of these phenomena, we propose to relaunch a secular culture and a pedagogy of secular inspiration. Our proposal opposes every form of fundamentalism, dogmatism, intolerance and totalitarianism; it is therefore not directed against a Christian-oriented pedagogy, with which we intend to seek dialogue and understanding for the development of education and democracy.

The fundamental feature of secularity consists in the idea of reciprocal autonomy among the different spheres of human activity, according to a well-known definition by Abbagnano. Such activities must be able to unfold according to their own intrinsic principles, rather than being subjected to external forces. If historically this need arose in relation to the relationship between the sphere of the state and the religious sphere, today it arises above all in relation to political ideologies and theologies that tend to restrict the (ethical and intellectual) autonomy of individuals and of civil society. In this sense, secularity is expressed first and foremost in the principle of freedom of thought. Freedom from hindrances and impositions; freedom to engage in critique and project-oriented thinking in the field of research and public debate.

We formulate this proposal of ours (see the Final Note) through twenty-four theses argued in essential terms^[1].

General Coordinator: Massimo Baldacci

Thematic Area 1: Democracy, Equality, Differences

Coord.: Giuseppe Burgio, Anna Grazia Lopez, Maria Tomarchio.

Theme 1: Identity, Comparison, Differences

Coord.: Carlo Cappa, Emiliano Macinai, Elena Malaguti

Lucia Ariemma, Irene Biemmi, Carlo Cappa, Rossella Certini, Fabrizio Chello, Valentina D’Ascanio, Antonio Raimondo Di Grigoli, Dalila Forni, Patrizia Gaspari, Valentina Guerrini, Zoran Lapov, Stefania Lorenzini, Emiliano Macinai, Elena Malaguti, Chiara Carla Montà, Simona Perfetti, Lisa Stillo, Maria Volpicelli.

Thesis 1: Identity is formed and transformed over time, as an enacted space of freedom and choice, through the exploration of the self and in reciprocal relations with otherness. It is not destiny, inheritance or condemnation.

This thesis is articulated in two movements: in the first it affirms, and in the second it negates. The positive movement expresses in the most concise form the processual, dynamic and complex conception of identity. At the same time, through the affirmation of this thesis, it seeks to reject any essentialist reading, insofar as it is vitiated by dogmatism, determinism and prescriptivism. Identity is grasped in its inseparable relationship with otherness, and its intrinsic features of freedom and openness to the possible are reaffirmed, finding expression in choice and change.

Thesis 2: The secular stance recognises doubt and uncertainty as the coordinates of the human condition and, rejecting dogmatism, conceives truths and principles as provisional stages in an open and evolving rational process.

This thesis is intended to underline the positive character of secularity as openness to the possible and to the heuristic dimension of doubt. By rejecting any dogmatic and fideistic conditioning, indeed, secularity presents itself as a wholly immanent key for thinking reality: reason is thus an instrument for embracing the constitutive pluralism, in which contradictions also find a place, that is proper to our human condition. This is also reflected in the status of truth: it can only be conceived as an indefinite process over time, constituted by the achievement of momentary landings destined to be discussed and surpassed, since they are the object of debate. At the same time, secularity does not reject or erase each person’s ultimate convictions; rather, by accepting and preserving them, it contests any despotic and coercive use of them, on both the ethical and the gnoseological planes.

Theme 2: Critique, Dissent, Conflict

Coord.: Maria Grazia Riva, Mino Conte.

Enrico Bocciolesi, Chiara Carletti, Mino Conte, Giorgio Crescenza, Alessandro D’Antone, Farnaz Farahi, Francesco Lavanga, Maria Grazia Riva, Mario Rizzardi, Barbara Tognazzi.

Thesis 3: Critique, dissent and conflict are indispensable factors for instituting subjectivity in a non-essentialist manner, developing personality under conditions of freedom and equality, and nourishing democratic pluralism.

Secular Pedagogy, which identifies with the emancipatory paradigm, problematises any substantive grounding of the human as a natural guarantee of educability. The human is not an a priori essence, but the outcome of processes of subjectivation: the subject does not precede the educational relationship, but is both its effect and its agent at the crossroads of praxis, material apparatuses, discursive practices and power relations. The formation of a personality capable of intelligent judgement, able to recognise and deconstruct forms of heteronomous conditioning whatever their nature and source, in order to weaken their power of subjection, proceeds through the progressive consolidation of an aptitude for critique, dissent and conflict. These are instances to which a positive and constructive value is attributed, fully recognising their status as an anti-authoritarian educational experience and an apprenticeship in democracy.

Thesis 4: Critique, dissent and conflict promote the anti-dogmatic conscientisation of an onlife society, and the historicisation and politicisation of knowledge, helping to prevent, through irony and critical dialogue, the internalisation of forms of power.

Secular Pedagogy, rooted in anti-dogmatic reason, understands conscientisation as an indispensable process that starts from ideas, critically observes reality and rereads it historically, identifying dynamics of oppression and possibilities for overcoming them. The onlife does not merely describe the dissolution of boundaries between the physical and the virtual dimensions, but indicates the emergence of a new existential environment, the infosphere, in which everyday life unfolds in a hybrid, interconnected space that is continuously mediated by informational devices. This entails calling into question every form of epistemic closure and exclusivity, opening up to the conscious recognition of grounded other knowledges and other competences inscribed in history and politically sensitive. Irony takes shape as a forma mentis and an educational practice capable, together with critical dialogue, of countering the passive and unreflective acquisition of subordinate forms of life and existential models.

Theme 3: Citizenship, rights, equity

Coord.: Isabella Loiodice.

Michela Baldini, Lavinia Bianchi, Marco Catarci, Francesca Dello Preite, Paolo Di Rienzo, Anna Lazzarini, Isabella Loiodice, Marcella Milana, Marianna Piccioli, Alessandro Sanzo, Massimiliano Tarozzi, Giovanbattista Trebisacce, Maria Teresa Trisciuzzi, Simonetta Ulivieri.

Thesis 5: Rights as an ethical and political horizon. Rights are conditions of possibility for a free and dignified life: political and normative guarantees that make equality effective and democracy practicable. Through education, they become lived experience, the capacity for participation, and an instrument of individual and collective emancipation.

Rights constitute an ethical and political horizon that shapes the lives of individuals and communities, rebalancing asymmetries and making each person’s dignity effective: they do not merely protect the subject, but enable the subject to participate in the construction of democratic coexistence. Rights must be understood as living practices, to be constantly renewed: achievements that are realised when people are in a position to exercise voice, action and responsibility. It is through education that the capacity to understand, claim and practise rights is cultivated within a collective horizon of reciprocity and solidarity. Education therefore assumes a crucial role in the political project of promoting rights: the intertwining of legal recognition and social learning gives rights their emancipatory force.

Thesis 6: Citizenship as active and global participation. Citizenship is the conscious exercise of democracy. Through critical and decolonial education, it forms free and solidaristic subjects, capable of acting for the common good in a planetary dimension.

Citizenship is not only legal recognition, but a living practice of participation in public life. It represents a pillar of democracy, which today is threatened by nationalisms and xenophobic closures. Education has the ethical and political task of forming citizens capable of critical thinking, resistance and commitment to countering inequalities. There is an urgent need to promote global citizenship that recognises the interdependence among peoples and guarantees universal rights for all, including the new generations of young people born and raised in Italy. Investing in the state school system means guaranteeing a lifelong path of emancipation, transforming coexistence into an “active peace” based on unconditional equity and respect.

Thesis 7: Equity as concrete justice. Equity is the foundation of democracy. It means guaranteeing each person the conditions necessary to participate, learn and live with equal dignity.

Equity recognises that people live in different conditions and that justice requires responses appropriate to those differences. In education, it means removing the obstacles that limit access to rights, knowledge and life opportunities. An equitable school and society support each person’s pathways, promote inclusion, and value differences as a common resource. Educating for equity means forming citizens capable of reading inequalities and acting to reduce them, transforming social coexistence into shared responsibility and lived justice.

Theme 4: Freedom and languages

Coords.: Antonia De Vita, Manuela Gallerani, Clara Silva.

Chiara Bove, Antonia De Vita, Manuela Gallerani, Francesca Marone, Giada Prisco, Veronica Riccardi, Marta Salinaro, Clara Silva, Francesca Linda Zaninelli.

Thesis 8: Freedom. In the face of what threatens democracy and every form of pluralism, we propose a pedagogy that educates for freedom and its exercise, for dialogue and critical thinking, activating processes of empowerment, self-determination and conscientisation.

Today, even more than yesterday, education for freedom is needed: one founded on the horizontal relationship between educators and learners, centred on dialogue as an instrument of knowledge and emancipation, and aimed at promoting the exercise of critical thinking, investigation and the interrogation of doubt. Freedom is, in fact, the fundamental condition for the full expression of humanity itself, and its exercise is realised in dialogue as a space for the manifestation and development of critical and reflective thought. In keeping with a Deweyan perspective, adopting a critical and reflective view of reality is the highest possible form of thought: one that remains close to experience, observes it, studies it, examines it and controls it on the basis of facts, developing intelligence through the capacity to dwell in doubt, open-mindedness and an aptitude for inquiry.

Thesis 9: Languages. In societies where asymmetries of power and relationships persist, we propose a pedagogy inspired by feminist and female languages and practices capable of developing self-awareness and collective capacity in order to transform reality in a more equitable, just and inclusive way.

Drawing inspiration from feminist movements, it is possible to foster an “engaged pedagogy”, as bell hooks, among others, defines it. A pedagogy capable of building self-awareness, critical thinking, and the capacity of individuals and groups to struggle to transform the world in more equitable directions inspired by non-patriarchal relationships. In the face of the perpetuation of inequities in gender relations, feminist knowledge, languages and practices represent a fundamental educational resource for questioning dominant structures and for constructing relationships based on solidarity, autonomy and mutual respect. A resource that offers tools for reinterpreting key concepts such as emancipation, self-determination and power, restoring to them more inclusive, relational and participatory meanings.

Thematic area 2: School, society, culture, teaching

Coords.: Gianfranco Bandini, Berta Martini, Ira Vannini.

Theme 1: Segregation, marginality, drop-out, educational poverty, inclusion

Coords: Gianfranco Bandini, Valeria Cotza, Ira Vannini.

Gianfranco Bandini, Eleonora Betti, Francesca Borruso, Valeria Cotza, Tommaso Fratini, Vanessa Macchia, Elena Pacetti, Paola Rigoni, Paolo Sorzio, Raffaella Strongoli, Ira Vannini.

Thesis 10: Educational poverty. A secular school must guarantee its commitment to combating educational poverty, grounding its thought and action in scientific knowledge, pluralism, rights and social justice from the perspective of inclusive democracy.

Educational poverty is a multidimensional deprivation that limits access to opportunities for learning knowledge, skills and competences for the full development of the person.

From a secular perspective, the state school has the constitutional task of removing the social and cultural obstacles that produce these inequalities. This requires teaching founded on the primacy of scientific knowledge and on respect for the rights of children and adolescents, according to a plural and intercultural perspective that rejects any ideological restriction of content. Any form of confessionalism or censorship on topics such as sexuality, religion, gender and multiculturalism exacerbates educational poverty and hampers the free construction of identity among those in education.

The secular school neither imposes worldviews nor submits to them. It promotes critical thinking, non-violent dialogue, peace education, affective education and the study of both forms of belief and forms of non-belief. Only in this way, we believe, will it be possible to guarantee equity and freedom of conscience and restore democratic quality to educational processes.

Theme 2: Teacher education and recruitment: policies to support teacher professionalism (professional identity and ethics)

Coords: Alessia Bevilacqua, Federica Valbusa.

Alessia Bevilacqua, Rosi Bombieri, Francesca Buccini, Rosaria Capobianco, Federica De Carlo, Daniela Manno, Chiara Martinelli, Maria Chiara Michelini, Nicola Nasi, Luca Odini, Jole Orsenigo, Fernando Sarracino, Giuseppe Sellari, Maria Rosaria Strollo, Federica Valbusa, Agnese Vezzani.

Thesis 11: Initial teacher education, recruitment and in-service support constitute three interconnected phases of a single process, aimed at supporting the teacher as a reflective professional, a builder of community and a bearer of care.

Teacher education should take the form of an integrated pathway that brings together cognitive, emotional, ethical and relational dimensions, in which knowledge, professional identity and educational practice are co-constructed. Recruitment therefore cannot be reduced to selection based on standardised tests of factual knowledge; the evaluation of a future teacher instead requires the assessment also of pedagogical, didactic and relational competences in specific educational contexts and authentic teaching situations. In school, understood as a community in which students, teachers, families and the local area constantly interact, the teacher is called upon to embody a professional profile capable of making thought an engaging adventure and its effects something real. The teacher is also called upon to develop an ethical profile that remains committed to the pursuit of the good, cultivating relational modes oriented by the ethics of care and acting as a facilitator of responsible freedom, through the promotion in school contexts of a critical and reflective attitude.

Theme 3: School and local area, local policies for schools, multiprofessional teams and pedagogical support

Coords: Stefano Oliviero, Laura Parigi.

Dorena Caroli, Rossella D’Ugo, William Grandi, Stefano Oliviero, Laura Parigi, Tiziana Pironi.

Thesis 12: The state school, as custodian of local cultural heritage, guarantees and fosters, through its presence in the local area, the construction of the democratic community. Where there is no school, there is no democracy.

The presence of the state school in local areas is a safeguard of equity and social cohesion: it ensures educational opportunities for children and young people and, when rooted in the community, becomes a driver of social innovation, strengthening local democracy. The gaps between North and South and between urban and inner areas show that the local context has a significant impact on educational opportunities and on the quality of the educational provision of the state school. For this reason, responses to the current demographic crisis cannot be guided exclusively by criteria of rationalisation and efficiency in the national school network: instead, they must be designed by taking equity as the primary parameter, assessing their effects on accessibility, teaching continuity, available resources and learning conditions, especially in the most fragile contexts, such as the country’s inner areas. From this perspective, the proximity of school provision must be protected precisely where it is most decisive in guaranteeing rights and opportunities. The history of the Italian school system and the many experiences of educational innovation currently active across local areas show, in fact, that when the school is rooted in its contexts and engages in dialogue with the community, it becomes a laboratory of pedagogical innovation, democratic participation and social regeneration, helping to remove the cultural and material obstacles that limit emancipation and citizenship.

Theme 4: Formative assessment

Coords: Guido Benvenuto, Davide Capperucci.

Debora Aquario, Guido Benvenuto, Anna Bondioli, Davide Capperucci, Cristiano Corsini, Silvia Fioretti, Antonio Marzano, Irene Scierri, Ira Vannini.

Thesis 13: Assessment understood as a participatory teaching process is a fundamental tool for promoting a school culture of equity and educational emancipation.

From a secular pedagogical perspective, assessment is a lever for change in schools if it takes the form of a device oriented towards emancipation, equity, empowerment and the education, formation and instruction of individuals. To this end, it is necessary to affirm and promote the idea of assessment that is fair, formative and of strong emancipatory value for those who teach and those who learn. Assessment is fair when it pays attention to diversity and assumes an ethical responsibility in/for assessment. It is formative when it becomes an opportunity to regulate learning and teaching, since the monitoring of learning is aimed at shaping teaching practice. It has emancipatory value when learners participate actively in its definition, implementation and interpretation, and when teachers make it a rigorous, reflective device for self-assessment, oriented towards improvement, collegial and grounded in dialogue.

Theme 5: Teaching and the value of forms of knowledge

Coords: Berta Martini, Monica Tombolato.

Barbara Bocchi, Laura Cerrocchi, Luca Decembrotto, Mina De Santis, Concetta La Rocca, Berta Martini, Tiziana Mascia, Teodora Pezzano, Lavinia Rizzo, Agnese Rosati, Monica Tombolato, Marianna Traversetti.

Thesis 14: Forms of knowledge serve as instruments of emancipation and human development and are at once the end and the means of instruction and education.

The forms of knowledge taught serve as instruments of emancipation and human development both in school education and in the field of adult education and learning. From a secular perspective, it is necessary to ensure plurality and equal educational dignity for all forms of knowledge. They must be selected and transposed in a non-ideological and non-dogmatic manner. The valuing of the epistemic dimension mobilises pedagogical reflection along several particular lines: inclusiveness and accessibility of knowledge, as a terrain for open dialogue and critical exchange; disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity as devices for the genesis and evolution of knowledge and its transposition into teaching practices; school curriculum design according to open and integrated curricular forms.

Theme 6: Within relational dynamics

Coord.: Giulia Pastori, Donatella Savio.

Patrizia Lotti, Elena Luciano, Giulia Pastori, Donatella Savio, Mariangela Scarpini, Alessandro Soriani, Franza Zuccoli.

Thesis 15: The asymmetry of power inherent in the educational relationship is oriented by teachers according to democratic principles in order to enable learners’ participation in the construction of knowledge, foster relational well-being and educate for citizenship.

Teachers who frame their relational practice within a democratic value framework orient the management of power in a shared and participatory way. This entails opening up to learners’ contributions in the construction of educational pathways, fostering a process of conscientisation regarding the right and responsibility to contribute to the construction of knowledge. At the teaching level, this points to participatory methodologies and to the capacity to support open and uncertain pathways, in which teachers retain responsibility for managing the sharing of power. But it is also a call to the implicit curriculum, to convey, through everyday interactive dynamics, actions consistent with democratic participation. From this perspective, the democratic interactive fabric is conceived as a source of well-being, since it values each individual’s singularity by fostering agency and empowerment, but also as a tool for education in democratic citizenship.

Thesis 16: Schools and universities are ecosystems that promote democratic relationships, interprofessional collaborations and community ties, including through the conscious use of onlife resources, fostering a sense of belonging and cultural generativity.

Educational institutions, from a systemic-relational and ecological perspective, are complex, dynamic and adaptive ecosystems: genuine “learning hubs” founded on relationships among students, teachers, staff, stakeholders and communities, capable of co-evolving and generating a sense of belonging. They place relational capital, listening and the valuing of subjectivities in becoming at the centre, countering anonymity and the loss of agency and promoting autonomy, critical thinking, collaboration and global citizenship (see the OECD Reports of 2020 and 2024). Teaching innovation is expressed in active participation and dialogue between different disciplines and educational worlds, through co-design, communities of practice, mentoring and service learning. By valuing the body and presence, these ecosystems connect formal, informal, community and digital dimensions, promoting the conscious use of ICT to expand lifelong learning networks, support well-being and inclusion, and avoid dynamics of exclusion or control, strengthening digital citizenship and communicative responsibility.

Thematic area 3: Community, subjects, engagement

Coord.: Giuseppe Annacontini, Maurizio Fabbri, Luisa Zecca.

Theme 1: Community

Subtheme 1.1: Pedagogy through communities

Coord.: Andrea Pintus.

Claudia Fredella, Laura Landi, Andrea Pintus, Patrizia Sposetti, Giordana Szpunar.

Thesis 17: The premises of the educating community. The educating community takes shape as a plural and dynamic relational network in which family, school and territory cease to be separate educational spaces and become interconnected nodes of the same formative ecosystem, founded on mutual recognition and educational co-responsibility.

Family, school and community have long been understood, and by some still partly are, as independent and exclusive spaces of life. Over time, however, there has emerged, among most people, an awareness that sees these as junctions in a complex relational system, one that is expressed more in the plural than in the singular. They are components in relationship, often not fully aligned in their intentions, whose dynamic interaction defines the concrete fields of everyday experience in which forms of mediation are available that can make models, habits and meanings accessible, or not, to individuals and social groups. It is in these plural and multiple spaces of mediation that educational processes, territorial alliances and the full recognition of pedagogical professionalisms are realised.

Subtheme 1.2: Conflict, dissent and social self-eco-determination

Coord.: Elena Mignosi, Manuela Ladogana.

Piergiuseppe Ellerani, Manuela Fabbri, Manuela Ladogana, Elena Mignosi, Luisa Zecca.

Thesis 18: Self-determination and eco-determination in/of territories. Self-determination, reinterpreted as eco-determination, becomes a pedagogical and political principle of reconciliation between society and nature, since it grounds the freedom of subjects and communities in the capacity to govern their own territorial metabolisms within ecosystem limits, generating learning institutions oriented towards sufficiency, care and ecological justice.

Both the state of democracy and the hypercapitalist and neoliberal direction regulated by profits — including in the knowledge market — compel us to reformulate the problem: not “how much to grow”, but how to organise territorial metabolisms (Saito) (energy, food, mobility, construction, waste) within the constraints of ecosystems. Self-determination, in this framework, does not mean mere decision-making autonomy; it implies the capacity for informed choice regarding material flows, technologies and the institutions that regulate them. Eco-determination, in turn, is not naturalistic fatalism: it is the awareness that any social design is credible only if it falls within the rhythms of regeneration of soils, waters, biodiversity and the atmosphere.

Subtheme 1.3: Research methodologies with communities

Coord.: Giovanna Del Gobbo.

Maja Antonietti, Giovanna Del Gobbo, Elena Luppi, Andrea Pintus, Angela Spinelli.

Thesis 19: The researcher’s stance in research methodologies with communities takes shape as a practice of ethical-political reflexivity and epistemological care, in which knowledge is not an act of domination but of dialogic co-construction.

In the current landscape of educational research, the theme of research methodologies with communities is becoming increasingly significant. This interest is linked in particular to reflection on the secular character of pedagogy and on the need to rethink the role of scientific knowledge in relation to social life. At a time marked by rapid transformations and by the growing complexity of educational relationships, research can no longer confine itself to describing or interpreting reality: it is called upon to interact with it, to accompany processes of change and to promote new forms of citizenship. From this perspective, the researcher is not configured as a neutral observer, but as a critical mediator of cognitive and relational processes, committed to fostering dynamics of reciprocal learning, negotiation of meanings and the democratisation of knowledge.

Theme 2: Engagement

Subtheme 2.1: Deconstruction

Coord.: Cristina Palmieri.

Davide Cino, Silvia Demozzi, Alessandro Peter Ferrante, Patrizia Garista, Elena Madrussan, Cristina Palmieri, Lucia Zannini, Elena Zizioli.

Thesis 20: Pedagogical practices for engagement need to be deconstructed, disambiguated and “problematised”; this means restoring centrality to the role of verbal and symbolic languages by analysing different communicative forms, and rethinking interpretative categories in order to support engaged and transformative educational research and practice.

Within the framework of a pedagogy that seeks to conceive and practise itself as “secular”, asking what role research, training and educational practices play in relation to commitment therefore entails an effort of deconstruction directed both at language and at educational and pedagogical practices. Both research and pedagogical training require continuous work aimed at questioning, denaturalising, dismantling and problematising what is regarded as normal, natural, obvious, self-evident and thus ends up being taken for granted in a specific context, characterised by ideologies that take shape in widespread discursive practices.

Sub-theme 2.2: Imaginaries

Coord.: Daniela Dato.

Maria D’Ambrosio, Daniela Dato, Maria Benedetta Gambacorti Passerini, Patrizia Lotti, Giulia Schiavone, Roberto Travaglini.

Thesis 21: It is necessary to support, among professionals in educational work, a shift from contingency to the promotion of spaces for critical reflexivity. To this end, a project-oriented perspective must be brought to bear on epistemological premises and educational actions, drawing inspiration from a transformative stance oriented towards change and the subject’s self-determination in relation to the world.

Singular and collective imaginaries (deconstructed, constructed and redesigned) can become, in educational work, the principal driving force of a secular pedagogy committed to and for the construction of a society capable of growing (Irigaray) and designing itself in an authentic and conscious manner. This requires particular attention to the connections between the singular and plural, the local and global dimensions, from a perspective of diatopic hermeneutics that values cultural specificities and plural knowledges as tools of resistance against the logics of homogenisation and cultural colonisation (de Sousa Santos) and traces forms of possible co-existence (Nancy).

Sub-theme 2.3: Responsibility

Coord.: Alessandro Tolomelli.

Silvana Calaprice, Enrico Corbi, Domenica Maviglia, Francesca Oggionni, Pascal Perillo, Maddalena Sottocorno, Alessandro Tolomelli, Elena Zizioli.

Thesis 22: Pedagogical science, in accordance with the principles of complexity and anti-dogmatism inscribed in its epistemological status, is called to a public responsibility in helping to guide policies, educational work and the development of a widespread pedagogical culture in public opinion.

Rediscovering the courage of choices means, for Pedagogy, assuming the responsibility of engaging in public debate in order to assert its own claims. Pedagogy and education share a constitutive contradiction of identity that has to do with power, since they encompass both epistemological and institutional dimensions. Applying the principles that pedagogy has developed makes it possible to ensure that educational action remains oriented towards emancipation, the valuing of differences, the promotion of critical thinking and autonomy, respect and solidarity among all subjects.

Theme 3: Subjectivities (un)confined

Coord.: Micaela Castiglioni, Viviana La Rosa.

Michele Cagol, Gabriella Calvano, Micaela Castiglioni, Gabriella D’Aprile, Andrea Galimberti, Viviana La Rosa, Maria Rita Mancaniello, Angela Muschitiello, Anna Paola Paiano, Alessandro Vaccarelli.

Thesis 23: The subject is an emergent phenomenon in relation with alterities. This relation is understood here as “reliante” (bond & alliance) and open to protean and resilient forms of education.

Subjectivity is not a static entity, but a phenomenon that arises from the encounter with alterities. If identity defines who we are, subjectivity expresses how we are and exist through relations. From these relations, which are always complex inter/intra-actions and always take place within a systemic context constantly perturbed by the encounter with difference, subjectivity “emerges”. To be and to emerge as a “subject” is, therefore, an act of ethical responsibility that honours the bond with the “web of life”. A secular approach interrogates, without preconditions, the multiple emerging forms of “relianza”, that is, the types of possible connections that are structured within a context, their configurations, their salience and significance in terms of “alliance”, but also its own particular way of separating and distinguishing itself, and thus of constructing alterity by relating to it.

Thesis 24: The subject is such if it has a language (expressive potential) capable of enacting a (political) change in the world.

Language constitutes subjectivity because it enables the individual to recognise themselves, narrate the self and act in the world. The word does not merely describe reality, but produces it, generating identities, roles and political possibilities; for this reason, it is intertwined with power and social recognition. Its denial entails exclusion and loss of agency. In the educational sphere, language becomes the foundation of a secular pedagogy oriented towards pluralism, dialogue and democratic participation. Educating in language means promoting critical consciousness, the inclusion of differences and the ethical responsibility of expression, valuing the multiplicity of contemporary communicative codes as tools of individual emancipation and social transformation.

Final note

This Manifesto is the work of the movement for secular pedagogy, founded on 11 December 2025 through the Rome seminar dedicated to the Agenda of secular pedagogy (to which the present work is closely connected). The movement identifies with the Italian Constitution and is situated within the pluralist framework of the Italian pedagogical community. This Manifesto was drafted through collective work organised into groups and subgroups (corresponding to thematic areas and themes). The text reflects the pluralism of ideas that distinguishes the movement, while sharing a common secular inspiration.

Endnotes

1. For economy of expression, the text adopts the generic masculine. It nevertheless recognises the importance of a broad and inclusive language that names all gender differences. ↑