Sob o signo de Jano e de Hermes: a educação nova e os equívocos de uma filosofia dos extremos

Several authors, notably Israel Scheffler (1970), Olivier Reboul (1984), Daniel Hameline (1986) and Nanine Charbonnel (1991-1993) show that the language of education is fundamentally a metaphorical language. That is why one understands, without much effort, that the idea of education is expressed and manifested in multiple forms: by its margins, such as a land or nautical voyage, through the figures of the educator-pedagogue as a gardener or potter, the student compared with a container now empty, now full, among other metaphors one could enunciate. The margin metaphor itself, which serves as a motto for the Colloquium L’Education et ses Marges (Porto, 14-15-16, May, 2018), is per se a productive and instigating image of multiple senses that, among several modes , can be expressed as: utopia, somewhere, oblivion, concealment, periphery, madness, voluntary or imposed marginalization, removal, distancing, threshold ... In fact, this image serves well to illustrate the very spirit of New Education that, in its own way, presents itself as a margin educational movement in contrast to the Traditional School that supposedly represents the center. The New Education movement became interested in themes and pedagogical ideas that were, in turn, marginalized, forgotten (at least apparently) by the pedagogues and educators of the Traditional School. In other words, it brought to the fore of the educational debate and pedagogical practices a whole libido educandi that was intended as alternative, innovative, that, in one way or another, sought to irrigate the thoughts, forms and practices in education and pedagogy. The authors focuse their attention on the key ideas of New Education, regardless of the designations preferred by its most significant authors, identify some misconceptions that derive from the circumstance of its statement as opposed to the Traditional School and, distancing itself from the philosophy of the extremes that inspire some of its texts, affirms the need for a philosophy that integrates the principle of contradiction and the included third, as it is more appropriate to analyze the novelty brought about by New Education or to identify the congruence between the processes implemented in pedagogical practice and the principles that it claims. Thus, in this communication, the authors first explain the fundamentals that inspire the hermeneutics they undertake under the sign of Jano and Hermes, and then follow the demand of New Education on the center of pedagogical action and the change of perspective on the “marginalities” that take place within the very scope of school education. Finally, the authors identify the need already felt within the very movement of a new theory and practice of education that, while distinguishing the plans of principles and the plan of practices, sustains its unity and the critical examination of the achievements obtained at a particular historic social moment.