Ua school that thinks less about voting and more about the psycho-emotional well-being of children. It is every parent’s dream, and especially those with fragile children. However, not everyone knows the possibility, even in Italy, of creating a school like this: at home. It is the so-called homeschooling: that is, parents can choose to have their children educated by private teachers avoiding them to become part of the school context, a source of discomfort and discomfort for many. There FIDA (Italian Federation of Learning Dyslexia) invites us not to look at this phenomenon with alarm. But some perplexities are understandable.
What is Parental Education in Italy
They also have above average intelligence but they learn more easily with methods that are rarely used in our public school, namely visual and interactive ones. For these characteristics children with Dsa (Specific Learning Disorders) are often marginalized from the classroom, considered ‘incapable’ and in need of psychological or speech therapy support and tutor for the performance of tasks. Yet a different school is possible: like the one put in place by Parental Education projects, also known as family school, from English homeschooling or home education.
The cost of this kind of education is obviously borne entirely by the parentswho withdraw their children from school taking responsibility for their education, and entrust them to tutors who will follow them all year round until the final examination by private owners. The parent must officially communicate to the head teacher of the nearest school that he has the technical and economic skills for this objective and both the headmaster and the mayor are then required to supervise. On the ministry website, all legal references.
The project was launched for the 22-23 academic year and therefore a future reference point for other similar initiatives HomeSchooling DSApp (Different Learning Strategies) launched in Milan and Vimercate, for middle school students (It will take them to take the compulsory school end-of-year exam. The program requires the children to be busy 5 mornings a week in classes of 6 to 10 students. The lessons follow the ministerial programs but are set up with a different teaching method: inclusive and imparted with new learning styles, certainly more suited to these students but, in reality, to everyone. For example the visual mode. The project was carried out by Ippocampo social cooperative onlus, in collaboration with the Cosmopolitan School, and also shared by the Italian Federation of Learning Dyslexia (FIDA).
The suffering of children with DSA
“Children with Specific Learning Disorders are among those who suffer the most at school”, continues the FIDA president, “A suffering lived in silence together with the family with the support of tutors for homework and sometimes even psychologists and speech therapists in tow . The taboo towards this issue is one of the worst enemies. Society assimilates them to the disabled, too bad they are kids with an intelligence equal to or above the average. The problem, or as they call it the “disorder,” is learning information differently from the basic one proposed in schools, so they are incapable “. For instance? The dyslexic mind prefers a visual and interactive mode of learning. But it is the one that all the kids in school would prefer, but it is not given to them to have.
Parental education for all?
“We must begin to overturn habits”, explains the national FIDA president, Maria Dimita, “because what is good for a boy with SLD is good for everyone, does not diminish anyone, does not reduce programs. Only the teaching method changes ».
Fulvio Scaparro, psychologist and psychotherapist, is skeptical about the issue: “Sociality is an essential component of education: the Italian school certainly has its faults but I don’t think that sending away one’s children and entrusting them to teachers, who are certainly very good, is a good choice. . The alternation of teachers at the chair and contact with very different peers is a wealth“. Not a good choice, she says, for anyone. Not even in the case of Dsa, which, remember, is not a disease but a different way of functioning of the neuronal networks involved in the processes of writing, reading and calculating. «It is an ailment that will accompany these boys for life, that they are far from hypodotized. And yet, with the right support and specific interventions to complement normal school activity, they will learn to compensate adequately the effects of this disorder. I don’t think that isolation, which involves being in classrooms where everyone has similar ailments, is the solution ».
Between chicken coop and bonsai classes
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