Costanti dell’educazione

Abstract

The article is based on a new theoretical concept of German “Allgemeine Pädagogik” which is called “Operative Pädagogik” and it consists of two parts. In the first part the “mechanism in the art of educating” (as Kant put it) will be demonstrated in the form of four specific triangles: the evolutionary triangle (nature consciousness-culture/society), the ontogenetic triangle (baby-significant other-things), the didactic triangle (pupil-teacher-topic) and, as a kind of summary the classical form calculus (causa
finalis/topic-causa materialis/child-causa efficiens/educator). These four can be regarded as the “Bermuda-triangles of education” because education seems to disappear within each of the three
given components and therefore educational theory has to bring them to reappear as a specific anthropological phenomenon and form of communicative practice. The second part will then demonstrate that these triangles however can only be realized if five specific conditions are fulfilled: the bodily basis (1); affect and emotion, embedded in a special relationship (2); “educationalized” time (3); “educationalized” spaces (4); and last but not least: social-structural conditions, both in a material and in a normative way (5). From such an operative perspective there can be no doubt both about the limitations of education and its potentials and possibilities.