02/09/2026
🎤 Today, at the Fourth International Conference of Scuola Democratica at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, Paolo Landri delivered a thought-provoking opening keynote addressing this very question amidst our current era of "polycrisis".
👉 Rather than falling into the traps of nostalgia, chasing an idealized past, or resignation, surrendering education to compliance and algorithmic sorting, the keynote proposed a third path: reconnecting school and society, differently, through a socio-ecological perspective.
📌 Key takeaways from the address:
🔹 The School as an Ecosystem: Moving away from the school as a closed container of learning towards an open, relational ecosystem where communities, territories, and natural environments co-evolve.
🔹 More-than-Human Governance: Challenging human exceptionalism in education policy by critically addressing the entanglements of humans, digital platforms, AI, and material environments.
🔹 The Ecological School as a Commons:Envisioning schools not as corporate sub-contractors or sorting machines, but as self-governed common-pool resources acting as energy communities, circular economy labs, and sites of climate resilience.
A vital reminder that the survival strategy for democratic education is not building a fortress of the past, but the patient, collective work of becoming open, generative, and deeply connected to our shared living world.
Discover more: https://www.cnr.it/it/evento/20651
CNR Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche CNR DSU Paolo Landri Fourth International Conference of the Journal "Scuola Democratica" Scuola Democratica - learning for democracy Sapienza Università di Roma
