ESPECIFICIDADE DA FORMA-ESCOLA E RESPONSABILIDADE DOS EDUCADORES

UM DIÁLOGO COM HANNAH ARENDT

Abstract

In this article we discuss, in the light of the essay “The crisis in education”, possible links between the specificity of the “school-form” and teachers responsibility. The assunption of the responsibility for the world is, for Arendt, one of the foundations of education, the activity by which we initiate new generations into a common world. So understood, the term “education” may range from child raising at home to the initiation into cultural practices spread by impregnation, such as those carried out in non-schooled societies. In order to delimit the discussion, we chose to approach the problem from the specific context of school education. Taking as a departure point Arendt's own observations about this specificity, we emphasize the characteristics of the school form and the exercise of teaching responsibility in an institutional setting. The hypothesis here presented is that this connection, as suggested by Arendt, paves the way for an understanding of the meanings and potentialities of the contemporary school.