Socialization in Italian Preschools

03/03/2004

Socialization in Italian Preschools

"Do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it." - Georges Duhamel, The Heart's Domain

SOCIALIZATION IN ITALIAN PRESCHOOLS

In the Exchange book, Connecting: Friendship in the Lives of Young Children and Their Teachers, Lella Gandini discusses the importance of friendship in Italian preschools . . .

"When Italian parents talk about why they send their children to 'nido' (the nurseries for one to three year olds) or 'scuola dell'infanzia' (the preschools for four to six year olds), they always mention the importance of learning to be with other children. They are right in a double sense. Not only does going to preschool mean that a child will literally be with 15 or 20 other children, in Italy it also means being immersed in an environment focused on attending to and responding to other people's ideas and feelings.

"Probably the sublest ingredient in the programs of early childhood care and education is what you might call the social climate of Italian preschools. One event has always stuck in my mind as illustrating this climate. Once on a visit to an Italian child care center, I saw a little girl snatch a balloon from another three year old, who burst into tears. The teacher came over and knelt down to speak to the little girl who was hanging onto the balloon fiercely. All the teacher said was, 'Non vedi che lo fai piangere?' ('Don't you see you are making him cry?') The little girl stared at her playmate. The teacher caressed her and then went away, without ever demanding that the child give back the balloon or apologize.

"The teacher alerted the child to the feelings of her friend, but never punished or shamed her. She assumed that her role was to highlight the consequences of the little girl's actions for her friend and then leave the children to find a way of going back to playing together. I was quite struck by how typical the incident was. There was very little concern about property rights, justice, right and wrong. Instead there was an effort on the part of an adult to draw out empathy and to create a situation in which both children could rejoin each other in playing."

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