Conference Program

Can autonomy serve as the guiding principle for educating for democracy? Drawing on the teachings of John Dewey, Lamberto Borghi believed that education should have the task of fostering freedom, sociality, and universality, as well as autonomy of thought and volition, while avoiding any form of indoctrination or brainwashing. Education toward this autonomy represented “a living experience of democratic life,” arguing that “in a school where the thoughts and volitions of students are cultivated according to these forms of freedom, I already glimpse a democratic society in the making” (1952). Borghi also wondered how schools could fulfill their mission in a world suffering from the “constant, growing, and systematic pressure of governments, parties, and economic groups” that work “to create subjects, soldiers, partisans, or to develop technical skills in a specific branch of production—fragments of men and non-men” (1952).

His words remain highly relevant today: schools continue to be a battleground for economic and political interests, and even when educational institutions are established that are autonomous and independent of institutionalized power structures, they fail to guarantee the “universality” envisioned by Borghi. In the postwar period, the pedagogical debate he engaged in with Dina Bertoni Jovine proves extremely valuable for reflecting on today’s schools, their influences, and their prospects. Jovine, following in the footsteps of Suchodoloski’s socialist pedagogy and Gramsci’s thought, criticized pedagogical activism for an excess of spontaneity and a tendency to focus solely on the current needs of students, based on the conviction that “education limited to the present was at the same time the best preparation of the student for the future” (1957). The pedagogical vision put forward by Jovine, on the other hand, considered it fundamental to link the education of the child with the perspectives of pedagogy and socialist political thought: to view “man in a concrete way, in a specific place in history (…) at the crossroads of the incessant struggle of the new against the old (…) The problem of choosing cultural values rises to the importance of a major social issue; the orientation of individuals depends on general solutions” (1957).

We live in a society permeated and governed by the special interests of large financial, technological, and military conglomerates, while politics—having progressively lost the influence it once held in the days when Borghi and Jovine were writing—flounders helplessly, attempting to exert an ideological influence on the school system that is increasingly shaped by the spread of “democracies.” What cultural values can we promote to educate for democracy? Can we truly foster autonomy in today’s society? What experiences of democracy can we offer to children in 2026, shielding them from the influence of neoliberal, authoritarian, and war-driven economic policies? By attempting to synthesize the thought of L. Borghi and D.B. Jovine, we will identify some trajectories, imagining democratic and participatory experiences free from the interests of large private monopolistic groups and authoritarian ideology, while attempting to outline renewed resistant pedagogical and democratic approaches (2022).