La dimensione politica della scuola a nuovo indirizzo

Abstract

The Italian experience that Frabboni defined as a “new turn school” had a political origin and pedagogical foundations rooted in marxism, problematicismo pedagogico (italian critical philosophy of education), Dewey, Freinet, and operated in the field of the creation of schools and educational services with hegemonic objectives that at the same time tried to form an intelligent child, not conditioned by proletarian background and family and environmental shortcomings. Ciari, Frabboni and Malaguzzi are the three figures who more than any other embodied the different constituent elements of the new turn school, each drawing on Gramsci’s theoretical positions on the role of the intellectual in the transformation of society, and balancing theoretical commitment and practice, putting in communication road intellectual layers, from top to bottom (that is, in Gramscian lexicon, from the creators of theories to the speakers of culture, that is, from the academy to the teachers). Abroad, the pedagogical aspect if the new turn school has been highlighted, while its political origin has been taken into much less consideration, unlike in Italy, where the studies of Frabboni, Catarsi, Baldacci have always kept attention on this militant dimension. Finally, the Reggio Emilia schools,
following an ambivalent indication of the Malaguzzian path, have aimed for a relocation in the cultural field thanks to a good representation of their educational results, linking them to the theories of Bruner and Morin, more digestible by postmodern international audiences, rather than on the premises committed in the marxist ground from which they also derive.