Istantanee su infanzia, adolescenza e povertà: esercitarsi ad uno sguardo pedagogico

The contribution is inspired by some photos taken at street children and adolescents in the context of an Irish city. Starting from the photos the author proposes a reflection about educational poverties of our days. The look through photos becomes a reason to receive the pedagogical solicitations about the way to exercise an educational look on the many faces of childhood, too often negated or unrecognized. At the center of the pedagogical look in this case we find children and almost adolescents that we can meet in the spaces of the streets and cities of Europe and the world. Children as protagonists of an street art and at the same time an “art to get by” that recalls us to become aware of the many forms of betrayed childhood and new forms of poverties. Far from idealizations of childhood considered in the abstract, the conditions of poverty and degradation affect children not only in the suburbs of continents away from us, but also in the West, where their condition of poverty is accompanied by psychological, educational and moral abandonment phenomena. For these reasons, the concept of poverty implies a reinterpretation in terms of educational reduction that draws to exercise a renewed pedagogical in-depth look, which becomes ethical and existential "exposure" to the others and theirs vulnerabilities. With regard a pedagogical revision of the significance of the educational observation, the paper draws on the thought of different authors, in particular from Lévinas thought, and takes inspiration by the other's face as way to make an original experience of approach to the person and his uniqueness, to feel his difficulties through a look that is capable to raise questions.