Maybe
it is me the wrong one!
But
I see
on my side many good
professionals
who are making great
things
with kids across the years, in every part of the world: video
and media education,
theatre,
art,
environmental
education, psychology, music and mathematics and coding
and so on,
with great respect for
people and
very good results, together.
We
show this in workshops,
meetings
and festivals,
we publish it on books
and web
sites.
An excellent work, indeed!
Then,
on the other side, I see the
rest of the world
where
kids –
let’s talk only of them here -
even
when
not affected
by wars and hunger, live a life more and more stressful, suffer
attention
deficit
and disorders, and
bullying,
spend most of their time
playing not with other kids but with
screens,
and generally grow without
hope in the future
and the idea they
can count nothing in society, unless they will
be the ruthless winners of an endless competition.
What
it
has
to do
all my educational and artistic movement with the main social
“trend”? Why
so
little of our work appears
to influence it?
The
current
idea
is probably that we are not
strong enough
to compete with the huge
powers
which rule the world, made
even more powerful by technological development but,
in this respect, something
very curious
is actually happening. The
centralized,
automatic, robotic “future”
to which most
people today
think
we are heading, it
seemed actually very similar to the “future” humans
imagined in
the
Sixties
of last century. In
the Eighties
and Nineties,
after the spread of personal computers, people with digital literacy
thought we
were rather going to a participated,
shared world...
There
is not a “trend”, but
different
visions
of the world which,
fighting, collaborating or perhaps finding forms of mediation, will
give a
direction
to our
future,
and
all of us are part in this.
And technology
does not lead humans to a definite destination, but it
depends if
we
learn how
to
manage
as
active
citizens or
only consume it,
if
we mind our
real needs
and choices or
only to the suggestions
of marketing.
If
we
get aware of our
role of producers of information
(billions of posts every day on social networks are something!)
and
of the potential huge
power
we
can have in our hands if we move together.
What
happens
on that
“side” of workshops, meetings and festivals where kids are
protagonist are
– we have to study and discuss much more about it, of
course,
than in a small article here, I’m doing it, I expect many
others
do – they are maybe little
strong
examples
of a future not only possible, but probably more realistic and
sustainable than that still based on the old ideas of centralism and
competition. As we are dealing also with
social
big troubles, nations and ethnic groups, migrations,
peace
and war, climate changing and environmental crisis of the planet, as
well as the physical and mental health
of women, men and kids in their daily life,
it
is not
only a matter of opinions,
an optional topic.
Let’s
use festivals
and meetings,
social networks, blogs and possible public
dedicated
digital platform
to build a solid
theory
about this. Let’s
make kids’
production and
messages clearly
visible
to
the whole society. Let's
take back technology
and use it with the conscience that really it
can
allow us to change the world, with another vision of the future that
is not that of the of The
Jetsons cartoons.
I
am writing better soon about this, but above all there
are
more
who
take this task in
charge
and
we are going to have a
public
shared space soon.
We
do not have to do anything different or
more from
before, but simply
to connect one another.
Connection, expansion, openness to society with the awareness that we
can
provide important answers
is
what we have to work
about now.
I’m
expecting here (not only on Facebook, please!) many
comments
from who agree with this.
