CHILDHOOD, ADOLESCENCE AND ADULTHOOD: WHAT ARE THE NEW EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGES? HOW TO BUILD UP NEW ALLIANCES THROUGH LISTENING AND PARTICIPATION

Why reflecting on childhood, adolescence and adulthood all together is relevant? Because reflecting on childhood1 and adolescence means to recognize the necessary aspects for realizing their well-being, while reflecting on adulthood means to question and understand why the adults tend to worry about children and adolescents instead of taking care of them. Because, nevertheless we can surely affirm at a social-cultural level that the Twentieth century has been the one which has highlighted the formal acknowledgment of childish age and thus of male and female children, juveniles, pre-adolescents and adolescents as subjects of right (Declaration of the Rights of the Child, 1924-1959; the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989), as subjects-persons, with their limits and their relevant positive potentialities, on the contrary the experience delivers us a childish and adolescent reality which is stuck in the middle of fragmentary and contradictory interventions throughout children and adolescents are often used and abused as if they were fashion objects without own identity and thoughts. Because, although the adults have started a child-oriented Welfare State at a social-political level, generally and slowly, in order to pay more attention to children’s authentic needs, on the opposite the adult, the father, the teacher, the medical doctor, the politician or even the elder one keep on filtering and representing every kind of action which refers to children, barely and accidentally touching significant dimensions for them. These are the reasons why we can say we live the paradox of the childhood feeling today. If we mean for paradox a presupposition, a generally recognized valid opinion but not practiced into reality, and if we mean for feeling a common mental content, a mood, a shared cognitive-emotional condition, today we can affirm the new millennium societies, and thus the adults belonging to these, declare and manifest, even at an educational level, a feeling towards childhood and adolescence which is full of rights, reflections, meaningful attributions and significant subjectivity, while the experience delivers us a childish and adolescent scenario where children and adolescents are used and abuse in every possible way. Therefore, we have to start from the adult to help growing subjects to develop their identity. As a consequence, the question is: what are the causes, what are the chances to rescue this kind of relationship?