“Difficult” People, Difficult Education: In Dialogue with Piero Bertolini’s Contribution to the Educational Work of Justice

Abstract

The contribution resumes the conversation with work of Piero Bertolini – educator, pedagogist, director of the Institute for Observation and Preventive Custody “C. Beccaria” in Milan (1958-1968) – in relation to old and new deviances. In the footsteps of his experiences and reflections, we try to investigate the re-educational paths of “difficult” subjects, outside and inside prison, grappling with the fundamental pedagogical question (what is the desired and legitimate margin of educational intervention?), at one of the most critical junctures for the subject in formation (in the conflict that he is experiencing with the world, with the other and with himself?). Can there be an educational orientation of punishment in the penal experience? How to curb the risk that educating intent on punishing profoundly mutates its meaning, to the point of transfiguring itself into violence? How to interpret that obstinacy to seek and to trigger growth in the difficult situations? What directions of meaning indicated by Bertolini need to be taken up, known and actualized in the care of difficult subjects? The hypothesis is that there is a margin for educating in punishment: it is the responsibility of those who pedagogically interpret criminal events to seize and cultivate it.