Distance Learning and Distance in Learning. Observations on schooling in pandemic times

Abstract

The article aims at reflecting semantically and pedagogically on the idea of distance, moving from an analysis of the practice of distance teaching experimented during the recent lockdown. It is proposed an exercise of re-signification of the term "distance”, inspired by Walter Benjamin’s concepts of porosity and threshold. It is then criticized a conception of distance as a mere separation of bodies (as the term “distance teaching” seems to suggest), to be substituted with a description of distance as the condition of possibility of relating to the other and the different. In the last part of the article, are finally analyzed, in light of the preceding reflection, the potentialities and the dangers of the use of screens as the exclusive instrument of pedagogy, as it has been experimented during the lockdown.