Dangerous Transformations. Dilemmas and Conflicts Between Politics and Pedagogy in the Contemporary Italian Context

In the context of the dismantling of the welfare state pursued by neoliberal policies, over the past two decades in Italy there have been multiple and pervasive social, cultural and economic transformations, some of which have had and still have a significant impact on the educational field, both scholastic and extra-scholastic. In some cases, such transformations have generated conflicting and problematic relations between educational systems and political systems (especially local administrations, as many educational services depend on their funding). One of the issues that causes more concern in educational services and generates considerable tensions between these and the institutional partners with which they collaborate is related to the process of service evaluation run by the political administrations. As a matter of fact, each service is obliged to provide official documentation on the educational work carried out. This documentation is subsequently delivered to external bodies, such as the Region or the Municipality, who evaluate the service based on what has been communicated through these formal documents. Since educational services are aware that they are formally and informally exposed to the judgment of local political administrators, they consider carefully what and how to communicate, also in relation to their objectives and the possibility of influencing their recipients’ perception of service. This type of communication, therefore, is not left up to chance, but is constructed strategically so as to be as effective as possible. However, the communication exchange between political and educational systems is not free from conflict, fear and ambiguity. In fact, in many cases the educational services seem to be guided by languages, expectations, logics, rules, standards, communication and evaluation criteria that are quite different from those that prevail in the political institutions with which they interact. For instance, the institutions, as opposed to the services, are more likely to evaluate results rather than processes, and tend to adopt quantitative rather than qualitative criteria. The services thus find themselves devising communication strategies that take into account the need to mediate with the expectations of their institutional partners, without however remaining subjugated. All this does not only produce constant tensions between political and educational systems, causing discomfort and anxiety in services, but also modifies the pedagogical and organizational cultures in often unexpected directions. Starting from this scenario, this paper aims to focus on the delicate issue of the relationship between politics and pedagogy in the contemporary Italian context. In particular, by briefly referring to a research on the evaluation of educational services carried out between 2012-2013, we will examine the different dilemmas in which services can incur when communicating with the political institutions appointed to assess them. The intervention, therefore, is aimed to critically examine some key problems that the services have to face by placing them in the context of a society that, according to Niklas Luhmann’s theoretical categories, can be described as complex, a-centric and differentiated in its fundamental functions. We will then adopt Luhmann’s systems theory to analyze some of the most significant implications underlying the communication dynamics between political and educational systems.