Democratic education as an architrave to counter the populist tendencies. Pedagogical reflections

Abstract

Every regime should include a necessary ‘political education’ of its citizens, so that its action can be directed in a univocal manner.

This is what has been traditionally theorised throughout history by a number of thinkers such as Xenophon and Montesquieu. The present contemporary democratic ‘regime’ appears to consider itself self-sufficient, conceiving of its existence not as linked to ‘indoctrination’, but rather to the universal suffrage as a sufficient prerequisite to allow democracy to become rooted and thus develop autonomously.

This conception of self-sufficiency is today seriously challenged by the departure of citizens from politics (intended as a forum for discussion, interchange and debate), thus fostering the dominance of the conflated virtual dimension of the social networks, which, in many instances, has opened up the road to the emergence of populisms.

To address these contemporary problematics there is an urgent need of a democratic education able to bridge the extant gap between pedagogy and politics, and promote novel forms of active participation of citizens within a critical perspective of ‘resistance’ to nationalisms and web populisms.