The cottage home of the Rome III meeting REL

The climate is of the best opportunities. In Rome, at "La Villa", welcoming, where stands as a relic of the past the chipped marble plaque of the Italian Communist Party, the "Giuseppe Cinelli" overwhelmed by the paradox of Mussolini architecture Garbatella district, was held on days 14 and 15 this month, the third meeting of the National Network of Libertarian Education. The event, after the two previous in Verona, he replied, in his intentions of meeting educational research and dissemination of a libertarian, implementation on the ground of the peninsula, said a specific purpose, and (built in the comparison operation that took place in January between the hills of Bologna in 'A' accurately reported actions in a previous article) or that, to welcome and give voice to the turmoil that is unfolding proactive in southern Italy and adjacent areas of the center of the country. An excellent opportunity then, to "test" the organization and logistics of the REL (Libertarian Network for Education) and realize, through the implementation of not always easy to move, physical more than a hundred people, the flexibility of the proposal. The days are divided into two great moments of participation, we are so divided on the occasion of testimony and elaborations of the working groups are open.
The meeting topics have been carefully prepared by the organizers, on the flip charts to split the subject of membership. In particular, those cases involved the following actions:

a) Ute Siess: "Educating in Freedom" - from Germany to Peru;
b) Interview with Martina Mancini testimony "directly" from the reality of libertarian Albany, New York;
c) Ute Siess: "From Italy to Europe, introduction to the European Democratic Education Community (EUDEC)";
d) Pasture and Gabriella kiskanu Studies Collective: "The libertarian autonomous schools, Italian experiences, Verona, Bologna and other";
e) Silvia Bevilacqua, "Philosophical Practice with children, experiences and reflections";
f) Simone Piazza and Francesco Giordano: "Practice in the State School of direct democracy: the word to teachers";
g) Stella Irene: "Imagine a Libertarian school, how does a democratic school";
h) Sharing of the plenary group work;
I) Conclusions by Francis Codello, headmaster of Treviso, Italy animator for the international network for democratic education (IDEN).

Saturday 14 and Sunday 15, after the presentations of ritual performed by the generous, good host Giada and Filippo, the Roman coordination for libertarian education, were better defined and ongoing "adjusted", the themes of two days of exchange and study. The overarching priority of work and listening to the laboratories, has been to provide concrete data on the experiences being libertarian in schools belonging to tissues such as the geographical and cultural enlarged Europe, North America and ultimately Italy. In this regard, it has played a major intervention by Ute Siess, longtime teacher at the Democratic School "Kapriol" of Freiburg (with a thirty-year career also behind in state schools in Germany, including his meetings " fatal "in education, a direct conversation with Alexander Neill Summerhill mind and heart of the British "school seminal" which this year celebrates ninety years in business), co-founder of an educational reality twinned in Peru, the Demokratische Schule Huamachuco, and the interview in direct of Martina Mancini, trainee at the Democratic School in Albany, New York.

Ute Siess Kapriol Democratic School.

A network of schools

Then opened the marathon of speeches, Francesco Codello (Director of Studies, creator of the REL, a scholar of the history of free education and "pupil" of the late "master of thought," Colin Ward), highlighting the points first and the principles of shared "Proposal for Education Libertarian Manifesto", elaborated in the months before the operating platform of the REL (What is Libertarian Education, the educational success: boys and girls as having experience, skills and inclinations-value; the figure of the educator-guide and equitable process of investigation / discovery / creation of knowledge base, the role of comparison and self-analysis in the evaluation process, the school as open space of participatory democracy, and the adult-parent 'element of continuity in family-school support to the growth of the child; principles to combat the "monster authoritarian European and global" Pedagogy of the skills and excellence of the Meritocracy, etc..). Ute Siess, opens the third meeting of the REL entering straight into the discussion with his own life experience. He says that after decades of this practice in both state and democratic reality of Germany, the primary purpose of his political action is to "create a network of schools working towards the implementation of democratic / libertarian principles (what is now known that in Italian who works in education 'free' choice expressed by the term 'libertarian', what in international reality is however, without the historical and cultural misunderstandings of the Peninsula, such as 'democratic' [AG]) and those who move within the State ". There is at present a strong connection between these different subjects, if you really want to change things as they are, Ute insists, should formulate a real web of confrontation and sharing in which all work together. This is because "we", caught in the totality of educators, however, "public" "we have the same goal, namely to facilitate the growth of children." The intervention of Ute, now falls on the ground of the practice, privileged libertarian education. Therefore recommends the immediate formation, during its session of exposure, the working groups to reflect and offer a meditation on the updated images on the walls of "La Villa" (a kind of reworking of an explicit path for fragments visible information created by Jacob Hirsch Democratic Institute Professor at Tel Aviv University).
In short, they put on display the stroke of a great cloud and a small square. The symbol of the cloud intentions expressed in the immensity of knowledge, the breadth of knowledge available to every person, big or small. What the tiny (but unfortunately powerful) square, represents the curriculum of state schools everywhere, a well narrower compared to the softness of the cloud, but, as defined and limited what the child "should" know. Moreover, in the square, the concept that applies as long as it takes place, is "useful", while the one in the giant cloud, is identified as "wasted", because it is too stretched and subject to "leakage", and therefore, according to the vision of "linear thinking", ineffective.

The group will consult on the images proposed by Seiss.

Without the direct intervention of adults

This view of authority, some of its square boundaries, forces young people to join, willy-nilly, to a "scheme" where people can fit in or who suffer in silence is accepted, while those who do not support the weight of the constraint is " expelled from the horizons of knowledge. " The prize of this "education" is the standardized student, functional to the needs of power. The possible answers out of this system, the square, are weak and small and often not fully considered. In contrast, with enormous difficulty of survival but at the same time with great tenacity, (as evidenced by the experiences of Italian kiskanu of Verona and of the "flight" of Bologna) schools that cultivate freedom and recognize the individuality of students, enhance the quality, diversity and the potential that children and young people express the creative energies of their differences and peculiarities. These are, therefore, supported by educational students pathways able to observe the cloud of knowledge and to merge it by acting in freedom in "spare time" of his own self-education and experimentation in life. The third round of the National Network of Libertarian Education, has made it clear during his two days of intense discussions in the inter-regional comparisons, (able to give voice, and this is certainly one of the major results of the event, all differences in the context of the rugged territory) an enormous volume of ideas, theories, suggestions, criticisms and proposals difficult to summarize in a summary of an informative.

Martina Mancini and Francesco Codello

That is about all the moments, even at the level of the future, the experience reported by Martina Mancini, a young intern at the reality of libertarian-Albany New York, figurative testimony of what it means to implement "free" educational theories and methodologies for long periods of time in the fertile soils ranging from early childhood to adolescence of children: "After spending a year and three months in Colorado, a Camp Hill, independent facility that provides accommodation for the disabled and taught art and where I lived with them, working from the thirteen to fourteen hours a day, have since been accepted as an intern at the school-Democratic New York at Albany. Albany, was founded in 1969, and over the years has gained prestige for its longevity and impact in education and free alternative. I was in Colorado the first 'trainee' of Sarah Bennett, and when I applied in New York, have been included in the four apprenticeships provided by the school in Albany. In their structure, can exercise a free approach to teaching, so you can rely on your knowledge, the boys to play or simply observe, all in an atmosphere of sharing options created by the assembly.
In Albany are also followed many social cases, there are children of refugees who do not know a word of English, or who can not receive regular support from families, engaged in grueling shifts to reach at least the economic integration . What is healthy is that there is a large open dialogue between the parties. One striking fact is that anyone who has followed a libertarian educational path for a long period of time, eg eight years, shows great empathy and sensitivity towards others. The boys have gained a high ability to sustain conversations with adults, and this fact is not obvious for a band as difficult as that of pre-adolescence. The availability of larger to help children solve their problems without the direct intervention of adults is the result of mediation skills after years of setting up meetings, and 'council-meetings' between children, where everyone is looking to help everyone. " This alone makes the difference with other courses officially deemed "educational."

Giulio Spiazzi
giuliospiazzi@gmail.com
www.liberAutonomia.org

Rome, 14 to 15 May 2011 III ° meeting of the Network for Education Libertarian. Debate among the participants.