Educare alla legalità:elementi di analisi e strategie pedagogiche

[Autom. eng. transl.] The search for a fertile relationship between the issues of education and legality requires, first of all, to consider critically how this relationship has developed in the past. In other words, it is necessary to subject education itself to a radical critique of its own presuppositions and foundations and of the social functions it exercises. We know - and rightly appreciate - teachers, scholastic and social realities who have been acting for a long time by concretely contrasting the cultures of illegality and mafias, but a critical look at the social function of education in relation to these phenomena is, still today, appropriate. In fact, mafia and illegality cultures and behaviors thrive in societies in which education (in its various forms, formal education at school, as well as non-formal and informal in the social fabric) plays a significant role. The founding values of illegality and the mafia mentality (such as individualism and prevarication, familism and contempt for the laws, refusal of institutions and silence) have always been taught and learned.