Education in transit: the school between ruins, labyrinths, and passages

Abstract

This article examines the role of the school as a transitional space, drawing on Walter Benjamin’s metaphor of the Parisian arcades to analyze the mediation between private and public spheres within the educational context. Grounded in the reflections of Hannah Arendt, the study explores how schools can maintain their institutional autonomy, resisting reductions to mere extensions of the family unit or instruments of societal ideology. In addressing the issue of school violence, the article contends that educational institutions should not rely solely on repressive or technological strategies, such as surveillance and monitoring systems, but should instead be envisioned as dynamic environments of transition and experimentation, where education emerges in the interplay between tradition and innovation. The analysis is based on Benjamin’s dialectical materialist framework, which facilitates a critical interpretation of the school’s function as a site of mediation and transformation. Through this lens, the article conceptualizes the school not as a static entity, but as a generative space of possibilities, fostering learning through the mediation between memory and futurity, between the past and the unrealized potential.