The task of a university is not only to transmit techniques, but to transmit knowledge by experiencing it: this is the cultural value of education. There is no ranking capable of exactly measuring the effect of this new educational paradigm, just as it is not possible to verify the transmission of the cultural value of Italian opera. In both cases, however, the impact they have on society is visible. Indeed, just as music is a form of civic participation, so are universities institutions called upon to educate conscious and active citizens.
We must do this with the Socratic maieutics in mind, according to which truth is not transmitted from master to disciple, but is already latent in the latter and, as in the gesture of the midwife evoked by Socrates, must be 'brought into the world' through dialogue. It is not by chance that Pope Leo XIV, in his Apostolic Letter Drawing New Maps of Hope, recalling Plato's Apology of Socrates, states that in order for the being to flourish, it is indispensable to take care of the soul. And he adds: 'Educating is a task of love that is handed down from generation to generation, stitching up the torn fabric of relationships'.
A vision in which the maieutics of experience is placed, that is, education as a relational event, in which the person becomes the protagonist of an encounter that opens them up to reality. This perspective recalls the thought of Romano Guardini, who questions the meaning of educating and affirms that educating means instilling the person with self-confidence and supporting him or her on the path towards the conquest of personal freedom. The act of educating, therefore, eschews all instructive reductionism.
In the light of these assumptions, we must renew the educational paradigm, basing it no longer - and only - on the idea of knowledge transmission, but rather on the experience of knowledge, inside and outside university lecture halls, through activities such as service learning, internships, and volunteering, including international volunteering, opening up to civic engagement and solidarity. This task is even more essential in an era of 'liquid modernity', to use Bauman's poignant synthesis, in which human bonds tend to weaken. The educational challenge then becomes transforming uncertain ties into opportunities for mutual recognition.
An approach that enhances the dynamic of education power whereby everyone contributes to creating knowledge. It is not a question of confusing roles, but of placing alongside the knowledge transmitted by teachers the awareness that young people act as true cultural anticipators. The anthropologist Margaret Mead observed that in societies marked by rapid (prefigurative) change, education is not a unidirectional transfer, but rather a reciprocal process between generations in which experience and innovation intertwine in a dynamic exchange and co-construction of cultural meanings.
