Are we adults?
The School of Life
Conversation with Daniel Pennac
Debate
We talk with Daniel Pennac, writer and former secondary school teacher, about the relationship between childhood and adulthood, the role of imagination in education, and the expectations and promises which come together with growing up.
Growing up or becoming an adult often appears in childhood as a kind of threat, a kind of inevitable fate which means a sudden awakening to all the harshness of what is, theoretically, “real life”, and taking on great responsibilities, the burden of everyday duties, and the sudden disappearance of second chances… Faced with this future, who would want to be an adult? Does the biologically unavoidable fact of getting older automatically entail transition to adulthood? According to Pennac, it should be accepted that the school offers a very frail bastion against the impositions of advertising and demagoguery which aim, not to shape citizens but to generate mere consumers. In order to combat this, he calls for a world full of passeurs: spirits who, instead of being unwilling to share their knowledge, are transmitters—passers-on—of curiosity and a thirst for knowledge to young people.
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Daniel Pennac
The School of Life
Journalist Anna Guitart talks with Daniel Pennac, writer and former secondary school teacher, about the relationship between childhood and adulthood, the role of imagination in education, and the expectations and promises which come together with growing up.
