The whole truth about School

Review by Prof. Elisabetta Fioritti

A publication that speaks to all of us because children are our future and our human value, and their education constitutes the fundamental means of growth and progress of human and civil society.

The authors denounce the limits of a school founded on narrow evaluation schemes, which cannot include the many facets of a budding personality, such as that of a young, growing student. In this regard, Horst recalls and re-evaluates the Socratic teaching method, which can extract man’s best potential. In contrast, the method used today by schools and envisaged by the OECD is restrictive and predetermined, responding to economic principles rather than ethical, making the student a product, no more and no less.

We must always remember that education is a social organism, not a machine. The authors reiterate this concept because the student should not be considered a “durable consumer good,” as Nobel Prize winner Gary S. Becker of Chicago claims. This attitude derives from the idea of competition and efficiency related to the market, principles that, when extended to human beings, can only have catastrophic consequences, such as students getting sick, teachers resigning, and desperate parents. According to the authors, the OECD has succeeded in transforming the “safe haven of schools” into an area of global competition, with standardized results according to the PISA indicator.

This vision of man is reductive and mechanistic; it limits the individual’s freedom.

He, therefore, calls for a peaceful revolution whose motto could be “For free students in a free society.”

Without wanting to go into the merits of the writing, which I also invite you to read, I want to thank the authors for this exciting conference on the world of school, which remains our excellent means of evolution and human development and which embraces the differences and infinite potential of young people generations, who must be helped to grow as a whole, to form a free and evolved society, also through action, which translates into “Friday for Education,” for a peaceful educational revolution.

I renew my appeal to read this exciting publication, and I thank the authors for giving me this opportunity.