As experienced in my engagement as a volunteer at the Open School for Immigrants of Piraeus, I will discuss the scheme of open school through solidarity and autonomy. How can we radically re-imagine school as a form? Can solidarity offer openness in the structure that can expand our operation as a school?
I depart from two quotes by Castoriadis:
Only an autonomous collectivity can shape autonomous individuals – and vice versa, whence the paradox, for ordinary logic. Here we have one aspect of this paradox: autonomy is the ability to call the given institution of society into question – and that institution itself must make you capable of calling it into question, primarily through education.
We want autonomous individuals, that is, individuals capable of self-reflective activity. But, unless we are to enter into an endless repetition, the contents and the objects of this activity, even the developments of its means and methods, must be supplied by the psyche’s radical imagination. This is the source of the individual’s contribution to social-historical creation. And this is why a non-mutilating education, a true paideia, is of paramount importance.
— Cornelius Castoriadis
