The promotion of thinking and judging capacity. Possible project lines

Critical thinking and judgment are human faculties of the highest order, enabling human beings to conduct their lives in a personal and well-founded, free and responsible manner, in relation both to each individual’s life project and to the challenges imposed by society from time to time. At the same time, however, they are faculties that, although native to the human being, might not germinate, might remain dormant or be deployed not in the flourishing of the individual but towards the degradation, or the annulment of the self, the other and/or of the world. They must therefore be initiated, cultivated and oriented. And, given their importance, it is crucial that all this happens in an early and universal way, so at least starting from primary school. Drawing possible project lines for the formation of judgment in primary school is therefore today, without doubt, essential, indeed urgent. In fact, the task of the school to enable new generations (Nussbaum, 2011) to discern, examine and manage both their own path of humanisation and the problems imposed by today’s society in a personal, critical and ethical way, can no longer be postponed. These are (social, ecological, technological, economic) problems that have completely new characteristics and that require, more than ever, the intervention of a human being possessing mastery of themselves and their own existence. This vital intervention must not suffer derogations or postponements: for the first time in fact, the spectre of planetary catastrophe is truly upon us (Latouche, 2020; Oreskes and Conway, 2014). But how to nurture (through which educational and didactic practices) the new generations so that they are able to fully develop their ability to assume their own ‘political’ task of safeguarding and accompanying the flourishing world (Arendt, 1959)?