WHEN EDUCATIONAL WORDS BECOME VIOLENT: THE RISK OF HATE SPEECH WITHIN THE EDUCA-TIONAL RELATIONSHIP

Within the debate around hate speech, the paper aims at ex-amining the role of words within the educational relationship, ap-proaching the risk educators, specifically teachers towards stu-dents, have of using – awarely or unawarely – words of hate. The chosen perspective from which the theme will be ana-lyzed, is the one of the international strategies, in defense of chil-dren, which, under the label of corporal punishment include the use of any kind of punishment – not only physical – that aims at de-grading, belittling, humiliating, menacing, frightening or ridiculing the child (UN, CRC, General Comment n. 8(2008), CRC/C/GC/8). This specification sharpens the centrality of the pedagogical as-pect of the issue: it connects words in themselves with the intention-ality of who speaks them and with the sense the receiver gives them. Benning from a reflection on the role of words in the educa-tional relationship, it will be possible to approach a pedagogical analysis which will question the pedagogical implications of hate speech by the teacher, as well as the conditions and contexts that allow the perpetration of hate speech, more or less consciously, by adults that have educational roles and task