Relationships between generations: from fracture to reconstruction

The more we explore the Adult Education themes, the more we become aware of the correspondance between arithmetical progression of knowledge and geometrical progression of the issue’s edges, that imply a renewed need for re-organization of hermeneutic models related to educational matters. A kind of problematicity set not only into what our eyes can meet, but often harder to recognize and set at the bottom of those epistemological matrixes which make Research possible. This also occurs whenever we try to propose a pedagogical reading of the theme/issue of relationship between generations. A subject that cannot be reported to a narrow field of research and that unveils its identity-making debt toward social, cultural and educative representations. From the study of the subject/process “intergenerationality” emerge crucial requests, which force pedagogy to search for and maintain connections with many different scientific fields. Thus, pedagogy reflection continuously increases its critical and reflective chances, thanks not only to the specific heritage of the discursive logics it is linked to, but also to the historical and material matrix of the subject/process “intergenerationality”. In this sense we try to synthetically list, as shown below, the main difficulties related to the said theme: - the relationship between generations is a natural matter (it is a human apriori) and it takes shapes and models which are continuously re-defined on the basis of social and cultural influences (it is a historical phenomena of human being); - the generations that come in contact with each other into the intergenerational re-arrangement can’t be reported to long-term representations; - the intergenerational contact doesn’t follow fixed rules because it is strictly related to temporary dimensions where communicative chances evolve, proposing new ways of communication between generation. Il presente scritto affronta alcune difficoltà sollevate dal tema/problema del dialogo tra le generazioni riferibili, in particolare, alle seguenti questioni: - il rapporto tra le generazioni è un fatto naturale (è un apriori dell’essere umano) ma segue anche modelli costantemente rinnovantisi – e non sempre espliciti – in relazione alle temperie sociali e culturali (è un fenomeno storico dell’essere umano); - le generazioni che entrano in contatto nella riorganizzazione dell’intergenerazionale non sono riferibili a rappresentazioni stabili e permanenti; - il contatto tra le generazioni non segue una regola fissa, ed è strettamente correlato ai modi storici e contingenti in cui le possibilità comunicative si definiscono. A partire dall’esplicitazione delle problematiche riferite a tali questioni, sono identificati tre compiti che l’agire pedagogico dovrebbe impegnarsi a realizzare in maniera organica per facilitare l’espressione del potenziale generativo dell’intergenerazionale. Compiti che fanno riferimento alla promozione per tutto il corso della vita di un “sapere di specie”, di una “immaginazione empatica”, di una “competenza riflessiva”.