**6. Education as communication or education (***Bildung***) as internalisation**

Teachers play an important role in combining different ethical discourses in educational practice. The teacher must be capable of ensuring, *as a mediator in communication*, the interweaving of different value levels (justice, solidarity, recognition of the other). The teacher must organise educational communication in such a way that all three ethical discourses are constantly interwoven in it. Not so that the individual can imitate them but so that an awareness is gradually established of the fact that when making decisions in life it is necessary to reflect on different value orientations (justice, the common good and mutual relations), irrespective of which orientation is eventually preferred in the individual's decision in a concrete case. At the same time, the teacher must also establish the awareness that the decision taken by an individual is their own and that they must take responsibility for it. Whatever decision it is, they must stand behind it.

• They must present their demand, position, view, action and dispute regarding another in a manner that is comprehensible to others (a *reasonable definition* of their ethical position). • They must establish the justice of their demand in such a way that any individual in the same position would be entitled to make the same demand (the principle of the *universality* 

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• They must show that the realisation of their demand does not limit the other (the liberal

• They must establish that the quality of interpersonal relations will not be affected (the prin-

• They must indicate the impact on the community and the common good (the principle of

I use the term "mediative" for this mode of communication because of its association with mediation. Technically speaking, this is a method of discourse that has long been known in didactics as the Socratic method or heuristic style. Yet there is a small but significant difference. Socrates knew the truth and believed that anyone could arrive at the same truth by coming to know themselves. The mediator, on the other hand, even if he or she knows the truth, must lead to the discussion in such a way as *not to influence the decisions* taken by the participants. For this reason, the term "mediative communication" is more appropriate than "Socratic discourse."

The *"minimum standard*" of moral formation compels the teacher to confront children with the values in their behaviour and accustoms them to moral communication. This is the obligation of the educational concept of public schooling, since otherwise it does not prepare people to face the difficulties of life and abandons them to cruel destiny. Whether this will result in the child harmonising moral judgement, emotions, will and behaviour with the common principles that he or she should follow is an entirely different question. There is simply no guarantee that differentiated moral communication will ensure the lasting and emotionally full moral activity of the individual. The school contributes its part if it develops the ability to publicly confront arguments and a *culture of fact-checking*, which is above all an important form of education against the manipulations to which the public is increasingly exposed. Today, various centres of power address the individual with fake news or encourage artificial needs of all kinds. Faced with all these influences, human choices are becoming increasingly limited, so the development of a culture of *fact-checking* is an increasingly important task in the education of young people.

The analogy of communication also applies when we think about younger children, including those of preschool age. When a child does something that is not allowed, the practice that has established itself in some nursery schools whereby the child is told "now go and sit on the couch and think about what you have done" is a mistaken one. Here, too, communication is important. When dealing with a small child, we are not going to begin with the method of public reasoning. This will be introduced gradually, in a manner appropriate to the child's age. We will begin with the communication of feelings, the stimulation of compassion and questions of what is right and what is wrong. The communication of feelings, however, should not be left halfway. It must be completed. Once again, we can take H. Arendt as a

principle: my freedom ends where *another person's freedom begins*).

*of rights*).

ciple of the *ethics of care*).

*sensus communis*).

Previous consideration of values, particularly the values that are inscribed into human rights, has shown that at the level of implementation, without taking context into account, the content of no value or right is self-evident, and none has an a priori theoretical foundation. The true meaning of a value is comprehensible only *in public discourse* and not in my inner, internalised and subjective reflections that are limited unto themselves. Even for this reason, it is possible to doubt that education (*Bildung*) as internalisation could be effective. Internalisation suggests the passivity of the subject, an inner predeterminedness that, from the point of view of the goals of developing the autonomous subject, is anachronistic. We simply no longer expect the school to educate a biddable child. The fragility of human affairs, as H. Arendt puts it, requires an engaged approach, critical reflection and great sensitivity to social contexts [9].

The teacher must, then, be capable of guiding open moral communication. I have called this *differentiated moral communication*. It is important for the public school to communicate to every child, in the process of differentiated moral communication, an intellectual and emotional experience of the difference of value discourses, in order to develop their capacity for moral judgement and teach them how to subordinate their affective moral inclination to rational moral judgement while taking into account the specific social context with all its emotional charges. The public school must endeavour to realise all the traditional aims of moral development, i.e. *moral judgement (evaluation), moral feeling and moral wishing (will)*. But the first level—the capacity for moral judgement and for seeing the consequences of one's own actions—is something that the school is obliged to achieve. This, if I may use an analogy, is the "minimum educational standard" that the school can contribute in the formation of the moral self-image of every student.

How do we conceive the interweaving of different value levels in differentiated moral communication? First of all, we emphasise that *differentiated moral communication* is not moral instruction and far less a moral lesson. Public reasoning, communicative rationality or public reasonableness can be a successful methodical tool within pedagogical communication. The expression "public reasoning" or communicative rationality is used by Habermas in the sense of an activity that is oriented towards understanding (*verstädigungsorientiertes*) the functioning of society and has no instrumental connotation [25]. Kymlicka uses the phrase "public reasonableness" in a similar sense [17]. This activity takes the form of conversation about all the requirements, positions and views, and also all the actions, that relate to the rights of other human beings. For school purposes, the simplest way to present it is through the teacher's mediation of the conversation with students about positions, views and their demands; needs or actions; disputes and conflicts. In public discourse, students should develop the ability to judge a concrete action, demand, belief and position from the point of view of different ethical discourses:

• They must present their demand, position, view, action and dispute regarding another in a manner that is comprehensible to others (a *reasonable definition* of their ethical position).

of different value levels (justice, solidarity, recognition of the other). The teacher must organise educational communication in such a way that all three ethical discourses are constantly interwoven in it. Not so that the individual can imitate them but so that an awareness is gradually established of the fact that when making decisions in life it is necessary to reflect on different value orientations (justice, the common good and mutual relations), irrespective of which orientation is eventually preferred in the individual's decision in a concrete case. At the same time, the teacher must also establish the awareness that the decision taken by an individual is their own and that they must take responsibility for it. Whatever decision it is, they must stand behind it. Previous consideration of values, particularly the values that are inscribed into human rights, has shown that at the level of implementation, without taking context into account, the content of no value or right is self-evident, and none has an a priori theoretical foundation. The true meaning of a value is comprehensible only *in public discourse* and not in my inner, internalised and subjective reflections that are limited unto themselves. Even for this reason, it is possible to doubt that education (*Bildung*) as internalisation could be effective. Internalisation suggests the passivity of the subject, an inner predeterminedness that, from the point of view of the goals of developing the autonomous subject, is anachronistic. We simply no longer expect the school to educate a biddable child. The fragility of human affairs, as H. Arendt puts it, requires an engaged approach, critical reflection and great sensitivity to social contexts [9]. The teacher must, then, be capable of guiding open moral communication. I have called this *differentiated moral communication*. It is important for the public school to communicate to every child, in the process of differentiated moral communication, an intellectual and emotional experience of the difference of value discourses, in order to develop their capacity for moral judgement and teach them how to subordinate their affective moral inclination to rational moral judgement while taking into account the specific social context with all its emotional charges. The public school must endeavour to realise all the traditional aims of moral development, i.e. *moral judgement (evaluation), moral feeling and moral wishing (will)*. But the first level—the capacity for moral judgement and for seeing the consequences of one's own actions—is something that the school is obliged to achieve. This, if I may use an analogy, is the "minimum educational standard" that the school can contribute in the formation of the moral self-image of every student. How do we conceive the interweaving of different value levels in differentiated moral communication? First of all, we emphasise that *differentiated moral communication* is not moral instruction and far less a moral lesson. Public reasoning, communicative rationality or public reasonableness can be a successful methodical tool within pedagogical communication. The expression "public reasoning" or communicative rationality is used by Habermas in the sense of an activity that is oriented towards understanding (*verstädigungsorientiertes*) the functioning of society and has no instrumental connotation [25]. Kymlicka uses the phrase "public reasonableness" in a similar sense [17]. This activity takes the form of conversation about all the requirements, positions and views, and also all the actions, that relate to the rights of other human beings. For school purposes, the simplest way to present it is through the teacher's mediation of the conversation with students about positions, views and their demands; needs or actions; disputes and conflicts. In public discourse, students should develop the ability to judge a concrete action,

88 New Pedagogical Challenges in the 21st Century - Contributions of Research in Education

demand, belief and position from the point of view of different ethical discourses:


I use the term "mediative" for this mode of communication because of its association with mediation. Technically speaking, this is a method of discourse that has long been known in didactics as the Socratic method or heuristic style. Yet there is a small but significant difference. Socrates knew the truth and believed that anyone could arrive at the same truth by coming to know themselves. The mediator, on the other hand, even if he or she knows the truth, must lead to the discussion in such a way as *not to influence the decisions* taken by the participants. For this reason, the term "mediative communication" is more appropriate than "Socratic discourse."

The *"minimum standard*" of moral formation compels the teacher to confront children with the values in their behaviour and accustoms them to moral communication. This is the obligation of the educational concept of public schooling, since otherwise it does not prepare people to face the difficulties of life and abandons them to cruel destiny. Whether this will result in the child harmonising moral judgement, emotions, will and behaviour with the common principles that he or she should follow is an entirely different question. There is simply no guarantee that differentiated moral communication will ensure the lasting and emotionally full moral activity of the individual. The school contributes its part if it develops the ability to publicly confront arguments and a *culture of fact-checking*, which is above all an important form of education against the manipulations to which the public is increasingly exposed. Today, various centres of power address the individual with fake news or encourage artificial needs of all kinds. Faced with all these influences, human choices are becoming increasingly limited, so the development of a culture of *fact-checking* is an increasingly important task in the education of young people.

The analogy of communication also applies when we think about younger children, including those of preschool age. When a child does something that is not allowed, the practice that has established itself in some nursery schools whereby the child is told "now go and sit on the couch and think about what you have done" is a mistaken one. Here, too, communication is important. When dealing with a small child, we are not going to begin with the method of public reasoning. This will be introduced gradually, in a manner appropriate to the child's age. We will begin with the communication of feelings, the stimulation of compassion and questions of what is right and what is wrong. The communication of feelings, however, should not be left halfway. It must be completed. Once again, we can take H. Arendt as a model, in order to complete the conversation about how the child has done something wrong and how they have affected someone else, with forgiveness and a promise: "The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility – of being unable to undo what one has done though one did not, and could not, have known what one was doing – is the faculty of forgiving. The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises" [9].

is that society is dominated by a "recognisable" symbolic structure, a kind of uniform teleology that enables identification. Consciously or not, it must be recognisable, since it is impossible to

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The medium of reform pedagogy is the child, the human being and the individual. In the last decades of the last century, the idea of the child as the medium of education developed within sociology, as part of systems theory [27], which gives it an entirely new meaning. According to Luhmann's systems theory, society is composed of various *functional systems* (economy, politics, culture, education, healthcare, social services, justice, etc.) which, as they have evolved, have become independent of each other, with the result that in modern societies each of them functions as an independent system, according to its own preferences, rules and criteria. That which is right in one system as a main legitimate aim (e.g. financial efficiency in the economy) cannot be transferred as a main value to another system (e.g. financial efficiency in healthcare) without the latter losing its functionality [28]. The functionality of systems thus makes it impossible for us to define the values of society as a whole in a uniform manner. For the purposes of building on our discussion up to this point, the most important thesis of systems theory is that all value systems are essentially particular, since they belong to functional social systems are not to society as a whole. This theory of Luhmann's is recognised as theoretically productive even by critics of his other radical ideas in the field of education. It is, in fact, doubtful that it would be possible to re-establish a situation in which the development of society were subordinated to some overarching ideology or uniform teleology [29]. This leads to an important conclusion for pedagogy, namely that it is not possible to understand education as "fixing" the individual to common social norms, and it cannot be planned as a means for global social changes [30].

The way in which Luhmann understands the relation between the social and psychological is also important for our purposes. The traditional view of socialisation derives from the theory that the social is transformed through internalisation into the psychological. The transformation of the social into the psychological is not possible in systems theory, because the social system (communication) and the psychological system (consciousness) are two different functional systems. There is no possibility of mediation between the two systems [27]. In the classic theory of socialisation, the transformation (transfer) of the social into the psychological takes place with the help of internalisation. Internalisation is not possible in systems theory. Traditional pedagogical reflection, which is limited to the French Enlightenment, German idealism and neo-humanism, is, in Luhmann's view, far below the level its own theoretical possibilities of analysing the problems of education and, above all, clarifying its belief in the causal relationship between the social and psychological or, to put it in pedagogical terms, between the intent of the educator and the effect in the structure of the consciousness of the learner. According to Luhmann, then, pedagogy has never been capable of developing serious doubt in the possibility of realising the educator's purpose. This is also reflected in the fact that it has used various constructs (pädagogischer Bezug—the pedagogical relationship, the pedagogical eros, internalisation) to explain educational effects that it has been unable to explain or justify scientifically. Luhmann also holds the radical view that the task of influencing the formation of the system of consciousness via the system of communication is an unattainable and unfeasible task for education, since this would technically mean changing the structure of consciousness itself.

identify with the symbolically unrecognisable or it is possible to internalise it.

The moral system must remain open in education in order to establish, consequently, awareness of responsibilities and duties. None of the moral levels in public reflection should be imposed on the student, and each should choose their own final decision. This is not a question of application of any of the theories of self-regulation. Rather, it is about forming consciousness, which is based on the simple fact that a moral decision in favour of a specific action *can only be the free choice of the individual*. Only in this way, it is possible to establish awareness of *responsibility* and from it develop awareness of *moral obligation*. Awareness of moral obligation cannot arise simply and directly through the transfer of the right of another, *nor can it be imparted without establishing awareness of responsibility for one's own actions in concrete situations*.

Differentiated moral communication demands from the teacher a willingness to confront the objections of his or her students. Teachers do not establish their authority through an instant pedagogical measure, but authority can be established through wisdom and understanding their students' feelings during communication. Even a teacher's admission that they are wrong does not in fact lessen their authority, it confers it. The old image of the authority of the teacher and the school has passed, never to return. The problem that remains is whether teachers are trained to act in unforeseen situations. Education is not in fact a causal process but a contingent one.
