Università Roma Tre

Pedagogy of care and vulnerability: family contexts and adolescent problems
This study program proceeds and is articulated starting from the recognition of the fact that the educational dimension carries with it a need aimed at favoring, promoting and activating processes of integration of the person within family, school, social, cultural, historical contexts - reference politicians. An integration that goes hand in hand with the consideration of the crucial importance of the psycho-affective dynamics that characterize the process of identity development, emotional literacy, the construction of emotional and interpersonal ties, as well as meeting and dialogue within the social space and shared communication. Integration, therefore, which, however, must not end within dynamics of passive assimilation, of homologating conformation, of dispossession and loss of self. Within this framework, the notion of "care" is central (see Giosi's text), as a pedagogical-educational category/strategy aimed at promoting processes and paths of self-analysis, awareness-raising, construction of significant relationships for the person. Crucial, within this notion of care, are those "roots" constituted by "vulnerability", "pain", "empathy" with particular reference to the condition of adolescents and families. Within a pedagogical perspective of care, in fact, it appears evident how the redefinition, today (and for several years already), of the family space, of the relative roles, maternal and paternal, of the social representations of this sphere, has generated a new and complex phenomenology of problems concerning the parent-child educational relationship.
The so-called "new parents" are currently living in a situation of relational disorientation. When a man and a woman enter paternity/maternity status, there is the establishment of a gray area, within which the spouses find themselves involved in a process of profound transformation of communication schemes. The anthropological fact on which education is based is there for all to see: the human person is not, but becomes. To become herself, the person needs someone to accompany her on this journey, because she does not "become" alone. The first "other" that the newborn encounters in its becoming are the parents. Throughout human history, parents have always passed on their cultural, economic and relational heritage to the younger generations; the older generations have, albeit often in radically different ways, expressed some form of care towards the new generations. Sometimes, and certainly more and more in recent decades, this care has been intentional, that is, parents have expressed an explicit will to educate their children by directing them towards the goods, values, orientations proper to their era. When the parent takes care of the growth process of a child in a conscious and intentional way, going beyond the practice of breeding, which every animal species implements towards its own puppies, we can believe that a properly educational act is being carried out . Education is therefore a function inherent in the family, in the process of intergenerational transmission. Working on these questions, we immediately come across a sort of paradox: if, on the one hand, the educational task of the family is considered increasingly indispensable, on the other, the inadequacy of the current family in exercising this function effectively.
At the same time, the same condition of the adolescent appears increasingly exposed to multiple criticalities: forms of toxicological and technological addiction; juvenile depressions; eating disorders; social withdrawal; difficulties that are linked to the "effort of being oneself".

1)M. Giosi, Le radici pedagogiche della cura. Empatia, Vulnerabilità, Dolore, Roma, Anicia, 2022
2)M.Lancini-L. Cirillo- T. Scodeggio-T. Zanella; L’adolescente. Psicopatologia e psicoterapia evolutiva, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano, 2020 (in alternativa: .
3)L. Pati, Pedagogia della famiglia, Editrice La Scuola, 2014

Laboratorio
4)Un testo di lettura (romanzo, caso clinico, autobiografia), prossimamente indicato dal docente