Education, Person, Suffering. Reflections of Pain Pedagogy

Abstract

Talking about suffering is not easy. It is a delicate and complex topic which involves, personally and deeply, each human being’s life through his/her personal distress, despair and, sometimes, even through annihilation: all the afore said places this topic in a sort of cultural form of exile. Suffering has almost become a taboo, even if it is more and more the object of show business nowadays and it is manifestly exhibited in public contexts. If, on the one hand, suffering plays a leading role in TV shows and it is the object of curiosity, on the other hand, far from the public eyes, it is put aside, even though it does not appear to be less thunderous. In the private sphere suffering is unsaid, denied, removed. Its exhibition has taken the place of its interpretation. Anyway, some worrying signals come from the new generations. The young people, in fact, seem to be incapable of going through and reacting to suffering, sometimes also to that suffering being the result of a little frustration, which is vented through exaggerated and unimaginable attitudes and behaviours. News in the mass media, meanwhile, already reports them almost on a daily basis. In this respect, what can pedagogy, and so education, do? Is it possible to hypothesize a pedagogy of the suffering as a specific ambit for reflection? And through what ways can education help the person to manage his/her suffering? This contribution aims to try to answer these questions.