Adolescência contemporânea e a busca pelo sentido da vida: contribuições a partir de um contexto escolar

Abstract

This paper presents reflections about the meaning of life for contemporary adolescence based on the contributions of a school context. Having as its general goal to investigate to what measure themes related to the meaning of life, to adolescence, to the valorization of life and the overcoming of existential conflicts are contemplated in the pedagogical activities developed by the school, this paper is organized into three parts, which simultaneously presents theoretical discussions and data presented by the social research carried out with teachers and students of a high school of the public school network in a city in the interior of Bahia. The first part of this work, entitled “Adolescence and contemporary societies: formation processes of identity and subjectivity in the 21st century”, discusses adolescence from the socio-historical perspective overriding the naturalizing and universalizing view that is many times attributed to it (adolescence) and its interaction with the context of the contemporary western societies characterized by ephemerality and immediatism, by a lack of positive references, by strong narcissistic, hedonistic and consumerist tendencies and their repercussions in the (re)formation process of the identity of the adolescent person. The second part entitled “The meaning of life and the existential void in contemporary times” presents elements from the biography of Austrian neuropsychiatrist Viktor Frankl that are closely related to his anthropology regarding the construct “meaning of life” and the feeling of emptiness experienced in contemporary times. The third part entitled “Education and the meaning of life: for a more humanized, more affective and richer sense of pedagogy ...” discusses the profile of public high school education in Brazil and the predominance of a pedagogical practice centered on technicality and cognitivism to the detriment of actions that educate adolescents for the responsibility of the search for the meaning of life and for combating the existential vacuum so present in contemporary times. The results obtained with the social research applied with 11 (eleven) teachers and 160 (one hundred and sixty) teenagers / students, from the referred educational context, revealed that, focusing on the cognitive development of their subjects, the pedagogical practice of many professionals gives way to very little space for affection, listening and dialogue about subjects and themes that really matter to teenagers and that they would like to be brought to debates and reflections in schools. At a time where there is a growing number of adolescents and young people who do self-harm or self-mutilation, even within their own schools, as well as the exponential increase in the number of attempts at suicide and actual suicides carried out by adolescents and young people in Brazil, the expansion of feelings of existential emptiness, questionings about the ultimate meaning of existence itself, the predominance of the cognitive aspect to the detriment of the integral development of the human being shows a model of education that is still far from what is expected from a “LogoEducation.”