Laboratories of community? Around literary testimonies and pedagogical recognitions

Abstract

The article is dedicated to answering the question of whether school can be thought of as a laboratory of community. The analysis focuses on the images of various relations functioning in the school environment which are present in literature of different epochs. Indicated are these directions in educational practice which allow the development of the culture of coexistence that prevents the phenomena of exclusion or ostracism. The inspiration for such an approach was provided by the concept of future-oriented humanities, which Ewa Domańska called prefigurative. According to this idea, the objective of humanities is to imagine tomorrow and shape its possible scenarios. The anthropological approach made it possible to combine the literary and pedagogical perspectives. The practice of eutorics (a term introduced by Dorota Korwin-Piotrowska, who also described this field of rhetoric) was considered the basis for thinking about school as a laboratory of community.