Education for freedom
The concept of education aims at promoting the subject's personality and generating truth and virtue. Education socializes man with others, making them feel like "themselves", "civilizing" and "culturalizing" them. Education is an ethical act, as Plato states, and at the basis of every educational process is the family, an important element in the growth of one's children. The family, in addition to satisfying primary needs, has the task of educating its children to freedom. But what does education for freedom mean?
Education for freedom means educating for "choice", exercised in the free comparison of given relationships. Choice is a decision about the quality of commitment, not the quality of relationships, since the quality of commitment will determine the quality of relationships. Education for freedom therefore means educating for choice, a choice that does not exclude other options, but which is continually renewed in constant verification of itself and of relationships. Only in this way does the choice become open to all understandings and, at the same time, distances man from the prejudices that limit his thinking.
Education for freedom means openness to a relational and collaborative world. The attitude of tolerance and liberal availability to the expression of others is not a way of tolerating them or feeling superior, but rather a respectful expectation of others, an expectation that is expressed in dialogue and cooperation. Commitment education means "giving yourself" to make yourself available in relationships, so that we can talk about a respectful attitude towards others.
The child discovers concrete and objective freedom in the relationship, but at the same time understands the objective limits of freedom, the awareness that individual will is not an absolute given but participates in a relational world. The struggle for freedom does not manifest itself only through a mere ideal affirmation of autonomy, but rather in relational commitment within current relationships.
The problem of freedom will no longer be just the problem of the self, but also the problem of the self and of others, since "giving oneself" means possessing oneself and feeling like men, proud of one's humanity, without the self-contemplating anguish of those who take refuge in own shell. The only anguish allowed "to the busy man" is that of inactivity, of not being able to give of oneself, of not knowing and, due to intellectual foolishness, of not being able to communicate, of not being able to offer one's human solidarity to others.
Freedom must not be abstract and unrealistic, but only makes sense if it contemplates relational contents. Only in this way can man define himself as a "free man", as Giorgio Gaber claimed: "Freedom is participation".
