STORY - "Reggio Emilia: Shining Testament"

Kim Moroney, Assistant Principal at St Joseph’s Primary Merewether, participated recently in a study tour to Reggio Emilia, Italy, a centre renowned for its early childhood education. She reflects on the experience…

The future of Early Childhood education in Catholic education is most significant in light of the document Catholic Schools At A Crossroads published by the Bishops of NSW and the ACT. (See www.mn.catholic.edu.au and click on link.) The document identifies ways in which Catholic schools can be centres of the new evangelisation and one of these factors is consideration given to the desirability of establishing Catholic pre-schools, with catechesis appropriate to this crucial stage in faith development. (p 13) The future of Early Childhood education in our Catholic schools is at a crossroads. This is true for our own Diocese of Maitland- Newcastle.

Participating in a study tour to Reggio Emilia has been both a personal and professional goal for some time. I am Early Childhood trained and my educational beliefs and philosophies are ingrained in an Early Childhood approach to education. Respect for the child, the child as a citizen, the environment as a teacher, teachers as learners and the ability of the child to construct knowledge and understanding all belong in Early Childhood education and in every part of Reggio Emilia - the city, the people, the culture, the values, the pre-schools and infant-toddler centres.

Reggio Emilia is a city in the Emilia Romagna region of North Italy between Parma and Bologna with 150,000 inhabitants. Time magazine has identified Reggio centres as amongst the top ten centres of educational excellence. In 1991, Newsweek declared that the pre-schools of Reggio Emilia were the best in the world. Professor Howard Gardner, educational researcher and theorist, states that:

...in general I place little stock in such ratings, but here I concur.
The centres stand as a shining testament to human possibilities.

In a brief article it is difficult to articulate the history behind the educational project of Reggio Emilia. It is a tale of church, government, war, suffering, democracy, controversy, risk taking, people power and action. Loris Malaguzzi (1920-1994) the educationalist theorist and leader of the Reggio Emilia educational project for over 40 years, is one of the main players.

In the first few weeks after World War II, parents and citizens of Reggio Emilia started taking bricks from bombed out houses and began using them to build the walls of a school, in a show of collective responsibility and the desire to create a better society for their children. Malaguzzi, a young elementary teacher with five years of teaching experience and three years of university training, cycled to find the school and these amazing people. Malaguzzi states:

Going home, what I felt was more than happiness, it was sheer wonder. Perhaps it was my very profession that was holding me back. It turned the old rules of pedagogy and culture, upside down. I understood that ‘impossible’ was a word that had to be redefined. This is just the story of the beginning of the Villa Cella people’s infant-toddler centre, but this is an ongoing story of men and women, their ideals intact, who realised before I did that history can be changed - starting with the future of children.

Reggio is now a network of 33 centres for young children, some for children from a few months old and others for 3-6 year olds. Every year thousands visit the city to learn about the Reggio experience. I belong to a Reggio network in Australia and last year I applied for the 2008 study tour. Over 300 delegates from countries as diverse as Ireland, India and Iceland were immersed in the culture of Reggio Emilia and in its Early Childhood theories and practices. We attended lectures and workshops, met parents and teachers, participated in professional dialogue - and for me the highlight - visited pre-schools and infant-toddler centres.

I expected another “little city miracle” when I came to visit Reggio Emilia, invited there to see its world famous preschools. But I was not prepared for what I found. It was not just better than anything I’d ever seen, what struck me was that the more that I observed, the more I realised that all of this was not coming out of some abstracted theory or inspiration about pedagogy. Rather it expressed something deep about Reggio itself. Bruner 1997

The beauty and richness of the centres and preschools are breathtaking. The rights of the child to play, experiment, discover, direct, develop, lead and teach are core values. These crucial years in a child’s development are treated with a respect that is often missing in some educational settings due to government demands for bench marking, assessing, testing and accountability.

I am now processing the body of pedagogical thought and practice from the study tour and asking myself the question Malaguzzi always posed- what is my image of the child? In answering the question, it is impossible not to move forward to co-create and co-construct possibilities that we may not have considered in Early Childhood education in our own diocese.

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