Mediatization, polarization, and intolerance (between environments, media, and circulation)

Luís Mauro Sá Martino 42 To bring the “habits of the listener” into the classroom is, therefore, to bring his/her experiences and transformations. The class, recalls Freinet (1997), cannot be separated from life. Discovery, investigation, responsibility, and citizenship are pres- ent inside and outside the school walls. It is in this connection, problematizing but continuous, between the “inside” of the classroom and the “outside” from the students’ lives, that the act of learning becomes interesting. While the school strives to leave life outside, says the French educator, there will be no way to work on the students’ interests to provide an environment for collective knowledge. And what are the habits, in a cognitive and practical sense, of today’s listeners? The first answer could be summed up in “entertainment and pop culture.” More elaborately, we could add “North American series,” “soap operas,” “cartoons,” and “games.” In more conceptual terms, the answer seems to lead to the notions of “media environment” and “mediatized society.” As Flusser (1966) recalls, the fact that someone does not master the techniques for using the technologies of an envi- ronment does not prevent him from living in it. The typographic environment, dominated by writing and printing, was experi- enced even by those who did not master reading, just as today digital environments comprise the actions of even those who, for some reason, are not connected to them - the digital barriers, thought in this perspective, they become triply excluding in their economic, cognitive, and relational aspects. The habits of those who were born and raised in a digi- tal environment cannot be dissociated from the culture of the media. Their ways of seeing the world and apprehending reality must be considered in conjunction with these elements present - in different quantities, undoubtedly, according to multifactorial issues - in this environment. Their references, memories, prac- tices, and ways of understanding are constantly articulated with these references from which people in the digital environment read the world (BRAGA; CALAZANS, 2001). To a certain extent, think about contemporary educa- tion is to think about ways of sharing expertise within a digital environment in which individuals, living in a mediatized soci- ety, stand out for bringing habits cultivated in that environment.