No. 2 (2022): EDUCATING THE EMOTIONS. The role of affectivity in the educational practices.

The emotional dimension has been seen with suspicious and contempt for many centuries in Western culture. Despite of that, today there is a sort of revenge of emotions. The emotional life represents a fundamental part of the human being, a very delicate one, because through it the person is exposed to the influences of the outside world: this dimension, therefore, asks to be educated, not rejected or neglected as a secondary one. However, there is the risk of passing from a vision of emotions in which they should always be "kept under control", when not silenced, to the opposite view, according to which emotions are our "true voice", the voice of our spontaneity that we should primarily follow. Actually, both of these apparently irreconcilable positions often show a common root: they are based on the idea that emotions are something "irrational", as opposed to the "thought".

The vision we propose in this issue, on the other hand, starts from considering emotions as having a cognitive value: that is, they reflect a judgment, not always fully conscious, on the value that some people, objects, situations have for our own life. On this basis, a reflection on educational practices can be developed, which consider emotions as a help for a good life, and as a vehicle for interpersonal dialogue based on mutual understanding. Within the school system this is true not only for students – for whom affectivity education should accompany the learning and the construction of their own identity – but also for teachers, who are called to reflect on their own hierarchies of emotions to better enhance their training work, and to better evaluate the emotional tone within the teacher-student relationship.