LIBRI DI GRAZIA ROMANAZZI

Maria Montessori’s educational proposal had a revolutionary significance since its origins. It freed childhood from the raising social marginalization to a “golden age”. In a period marked by widespread national-popular illiteracy, a “New Education” originated exactly among the poorest social classes, represented a valuable tool for the literacy and regimentation of the masses to the rising fascist ideology. Montessori avoided it, paying with obstructionism and discredit. However, even today, Montessorian theory keeps on gaining credit as a “pedagogy of resistance” to the technical and technological revolution of information and communication. She is not even adverse to the use of technology in daily life or in education. Far from stopping the technical progress and the social technological literacy, it is a question of stemming the educational deprivation of the young people experience, rediscovering an active, direct and participative learning, with a specific attention to the early childhood. Experience offers a good and attractive alternative to the standstill caused by the overuse of the mass communication means. Preserving the 0-3 years children from the early abuse of technology, provides a “dilating education” of childhood’s fields of experience and evolutive possibilities. In this way the child is ready to approach the technologies, in order to enjoy without suffering their growing capacities.

L’estremizzazione acritica dell’utilizzo di device digitali ha recentemente pale-sato alcuni esiti nefasti sull’età evolutiva e sui giovani adulti, quali la de-umanizzazione delle relazioni e la de-materializzazione delle esperienze. Un raffronto fra la tradizione pedagogica montessoriana e le realtà educative attua-li mostra un imperituro interesse infantile per le esperienze percettivo-sensoriali liberamente scelte, che edificano il personale bagaglio di conoscenze e competenze. Questa dimensione sollecita anche la formazione di educatori, educatrici, pedagogisti, pedagogiste e insegnanti che progettano esperienze di apprendimento, a partire dal proprio background culturale, formativo e sociale. Tale è il sostrato motivazionale di una “sperimentazione” metodologico-didattica innovativa, promossa nell’ambito del Dipartimento SFBCT dell’Università di Macerata, che ha inteso offrire ai propri studenti e alle pro-prie studentesse seminari, laboratori, visite guidate e osservazioni mirate pres-so l’Istituto Comprensivo Chiaravalle Montessoriano – Casa dei Bambini e la Casa Museo Montessori, in risposta al dichiarato bisogno e desiderio di espe-rienza “sul campo”, anche di tipo relazionale, nella comunità studentesca e tra studenti, studentesse e docenti. Parole chiave: Primainfanzia e media addiction; Montessori ed educazione precoce; Educazione esperienziale; Montessori all’Università; Comunità di ap-prendimento

A partire dai pesanti condizionamenti culturali che gravavano sull’educazione dei bambini e delle bambine nella società patriarcale, fortemente ancorata alle differenze di genere, l’autore si chiede se e in quale misura persistano, oggi, tali stereotipi. A tal fine, viene analizzata, e, talvolta, smascherata, la logica subliminale sottesa alla pubblicità, ai giocattoli, ai cartoni animati: dai classici ai più recenti, e, finanche, ai libri di testo scolastici. In molti casi, emerge un vero e proprio processo di induzione e allenamento dei più piccoli ad assumere, nel futuro, i tradizionali ruoli stereotipati. Seppure non trascurabili sono i danni causati ai bambini, castrati soprattutto nell’emotività, il bilancio risulta nettamente a sfavore delle bambine. Queste, infatti, vengono avviate a una precoce iperfemminilizzazione e persuase che la seduttività sia l’unico potere di cui dispongano. In chiave pedagogica, questo fenomeno viene colto anche come conseguenza dell’assenza o carenza della figura paterna, in quanto luogo di promozione della differenza. Pertanto, l’apertura progettuale si dà in una inedita paternità tenera. La riflessione si conclude nel segno della speranza, testimoniata da alcune principesse pop-moderne che, emancipandosi, si sono salvate da sole.

Freedom, autonomy and responsibility are the ends of every educational process, especially in the modern society: globalized, rapid, in transformation; society in which each one of us is called to make numerous choices. Therefore, it is urgent to educate to choose and educate to the choice, so that young people can emancipate themselves from possible conditionings. To this end, the Montessori method represents a privileged way: child is free to choose his own activity and learns "to do by himself" soon; the teacher prepares the environment and the materials that allow the student to satisfy the educational needs of each period of inner development. Then, Montessori gives importance to adolescence because it is during this period that grows the social man. Consequently, it is important to reform the secondary school in order to acquire the autonomy that each student will apply to the subsequent school grades and to all areas of life

The author investigates the universe of the young people in the Italian context, starting from the political impediments which affect the job placement and, consequently, delay the acquisition of economic independence and housing autonomy, and considering the cultural conditions of a society that "holds" children in their maternal houses and inhibits their transition to adult life and the formation of their own family. The portrait of a community with a low birth rate emerges as an unequivocal sign of a personal and social crisis. But still in young people survives and persists a hidden desire for family which is a yearning for planning as an ontological category of human beings. Therefore, the hope and commitment at the same time are the definition of adult education pathways, focused on parenting, birth and care education.

The author investigates the "youth universe" in Italy; specifically, the hard relationship between it and politics and institutions, characterized by a lack of trust and credibility. The question of the absence of work makes the Italian case unique and exemplary: young people are precarious, inadequately paid. Unemployment, the late age to the first job and atypical contracts impoverish young people of the potential wealth they could carry around: innovation, change, planning, growth and future; all that exclude them from the country’s decision-making processes. Thus, housing autonomy and economic independence are postponed, hence the transition to adulthood. Deprived of the fixed points that guided previous generations, today’s young people do not recognize themselves into any ideology, do not feel represented by any political force. An investigation carried out close to the elections of March 4, 2018 confirmed what has been exposed so far and noted that the consequent discontent found a possibility of expression and change in the neophyte Movimento 5 Stelle. Therefore, it is appropriate to ask ourselves what are the motivations and conditions that have led young people, disappointed and disillusioned, to move away from "traditional politics". It is urgent to promote a cultural revolution to give young Italians the role of protagonists of present, backed by tradition but making space to the new and welcoming the future. Which role does the family play as the primary agency for political education? What proposal can make pedagogy of family educational relationships?

Starting from youngsters’ statements of "little trust" in the main established institutions (including government, politics, police, healthcare, Church, education and family), the author delves into the motivations and effects of the widespread mistrust of the new generations towards the adult society. The reasons seem to include the ethical-moral disorientation and the value void characterizing youth nowadays. Young individuals need certainties, rules and limits allowing them to orientate and regulate themselves in an increasingly fast world, with frontiers that are no longer insuperable. The adults have abdicated from their educational responsibilities, in favor of an elusive friend figure (i.e., the parent-friend, the teacher-friend) that has nothing to do with the healthy and physiological asymmetry allowing the child/adolescent to differentiate him/herself from the adult in order to grow up. Deviance, therefore, defined as having a harmful, offensive and abusive conduct, and leading, in the worst case scenario, to delinquency, becomes an expression of discomfort that does not find alternatives for communication. Considered such an emergency, the author offers methodological recommendations and practical tools, such as orientation, counseling, writing cure, in order to promote prevention, favoring education paths to legality, to spread authentic values, sense of justice, responsibility towards others, desire to collaboration and sharing, aiming to a more human and democratic society.

This article aims to analyze the conceptions of legality, justice, democracy, citizenship, re-evaluating them in the light of an ethical vision inspired by responsibility or by a com-partecipation of experiences and meanings, of norms and values intimately and authentically perceived as good, healthy, fair, therefore legitimized, from the citizen to the collectivity, as fair and universal. Once again, school and family are the primary and fundamental agencies dedicated to educate young people to an open, critical and elastic mindset and to an inspired and oriented modus operandi aimed to responsible behaviours in co-responsibility with other social actors. Particularly in the family context, the conscious and responsible recovery of the exemplary and educational firmness of adults is essential for an action carried out with intentionality and planning. These aspects should characterize all the educators in any reference context. In the scholastic one, starting from the first attempts at the theorization and widespread dissemination of new ideas of democracy and citizenship, we will explore the current Citizenship and Constitution curriculum, which, ambitiously, includes students and teachers in a path that, starting from the early childhood, could evolve to contests, modalities, knowledges and skills along the ideal continuum that binds the various orders and degrees of schooling. 

L’articolo mira ad analizzare alcuni fra i principi cardine del pensiero di Maria Montessori combinandoli creativamente con uno dei tracciati psicoanalitici delineati da Bruno Bettelheim ne Il mondo incantato (1976). Il confronto fra le due matrici teoriche - l’una declinata sul versante della crescita infantile e a misura di bambino, l’altra sul crinale del rapporto fra la realtà esperita dal bambino stesso e la sua realtà inconscia - fornisce un quadro prospettico e di analisi altamente funzionale all’educazione e alla cura della primissima infanzia. L’autrice, per questa via, disegna percorsi di umanazione dello sviluppo infantile lumeggiando la strada impervia, ma del tutto priva di biforcazioni, dell’incontro possibile e plausibile fra il montessoriano dato di realtà e l’irrinunciabile immaginazione infantile tematizzata dallo psicoanalista. Attraverso la pratica dell’affabulare, dove fantasia e realtà si fondono ma non per questo si confondono, l’autrice propone percorsi di sensibilizzazione precoce all’oggetto-libro (magico e, al contempo, reale) ad appannaggio di un’educazione che sappia porsi in ascolto di un’ulteriorità silenziosa, eppure presente.