Workshop 5
3.00 p.m.The Children’s Crusade: freeing the mind
What does this all add up to, then? Is it possible now to roughly outline some kind of positive hypothesis after, unfortunately, reviewing so many direly negative scenarios? Hello Life: are we at last ready to answer?
The 33rd edition of the Pio Manzù International Conference opened with the flight of the hummingbird which steadfastly presses straight on in the face of the unthinkable, ever-spreading tragedy of the forest fire, the disconcerting, apparently uncontrollable spread of the forces of evil bent on subjugating the entire world through fear.
Fear holds us in its grasp, - the fear of a violence that seems irremediable and against which all our powers of reason and all the classic instruments of law and order on a planetary scale seem woefully inadequate. After pointing the finger at so many evils and plagues that warrant further in-depth analysis, it is inescapably incumbent upon us now to give voice to a number of final considerations to somehow counterbalance the murky areas we have been peering into.
The crude spectacle offered by the countless offences against the essential God-given humanity, freedom and individuality of children in the world fatally foreshadows the destruction of our human prospects of any kind of adult civilisation.
The child is the anthropological and psychological framework within which the trans-formations of our way of living in the world are conceived. In every child, the world is created anew, and 70% of the overall make-up of the individual is already defined in the child he once was; as William Wordsworth so succinctly puts it: “The Child is father of the Man”.
If we thought otherwise, we would not only be blowing the solid edifice of psychology sky-high,but we would also be denying the truth of our own adult perception that the spirit of children is also the spirit of salvation, from Jesus Christ to the theory (which is much more than a theory) underlying Pascoli’s poem “The Little Boy”.
The very essence of being a son or daughter is deeply rooted in one’s childhood, but so is the essence of being a mother or father. If this is destroyed, the whole of human development is turned on its head, only for us to become, perhaps, some new, far from evolved species bred in the laboratory.
Perhaps we should rally to the call for the “Children’s Crusade” that the sparkling genius of the French writer, Marcel Schwob, so fervently imagined, but not a crusade in this day and age like those of the Middle Ages, for which there is truly no longer any need. The crusade we seek to evoke is that which lies deep in the soul of those who ask the world for no more than the right to dream.
On the one hand, there are whole cascades of water that no one collects in receptacles, and, on the other, the tiny beak of the humming-bird carrying its drop of water to put out the fire. Shall we superciliously accuse the humming-bird or the missionary of gross naivety, because they are doing their bit? No, they are moving hearts and limbs.
Chairperson
Maria Rita Parsi
(Italy) Educational psychologist, psychotherapist and author, Maria Rita Parsi, works in Milan, Rome and Switzerland. She is Director of the Italian Society of Psychoanimation (SIPA) which she founded in 1985, and a Member of the governing body of the Italian Society of Psychology. In 1991, she set up the “Movimento Bambino” Foundation, a non-profit-making organization dedicated to promoting children’s creative thought and expression as a means against the abuse and exploitation of children. The Foundation is also concerned with the legal protection and social care of children through a network of four centres (Rome, Milan, Cosenza and San Vendemmiano) and a number of offices in Italy and Switzerland.
Tutor
Salvatore Giannella
(Italy) Journalist, former editor-in-chief of the science magazine Genius (1984), the weekly magazine L’Europeo (1985), and Airone (1986- 2004), which is the foremost nature magazine in Italy. In 2000 he was appointed science and cultural news editor of the weekly magazine Oggi. Author of the book “L’Arca dell’Arte” (The Arch of Art), he has edited for the RAI-Italian Television Service the documentary film “La lista di Pasquale Rotondi” (Pasquale Rotondi’s List), which relates the story of the rescue of some of the most important works of art in Italy during World War II.
Panel
Lyan de Buin-Verburg
(Netherlands) Conductor of the Jostiband Orchestra, the largest music group of mentally handicapped people in the world. Many of the members are very young and have Downs Syndrome. This group from Zwammerdam has been playing music with great success for more than forty years. With a constant endeavour, and thanks to a teaching method which is also applicable to the non-handicapped, the Orchestra has succeeded in playing to full theatres and held out the hope of something “normal” for the many young people with difficulties.
Federica Mormando
(Italy) A psychiatrist, she is President of the Italian Section of “Eurotalent” an NGO specialising in assisting young people with special talents. “Eurotalent Italia” organises training courses for teachers so that they learn to recognise the real potential of especially gifted children.
Ajay Puri
(India) Nine-years old, Ajay Puri is a genius in the world of the computer. He is the youngest software kid and web designer in the world and this has gained him the title of “Little Indian Bill Gates”. Though born in India, he lives in Bangkok, Thailand, where his father is a manager for the textile group, Aditya Birla. Ajay Puri will have his eleventh birthday in September 2007. His achievements are extraordinary and have gained him the admiration even of Bill Gates who has allowed him to use the trademark www.microsoftkid.com
Francesco Tonucci
(Italy) Pedagogue and researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council (CNR). His main research interests are the cognitive development of children, the study of children’s thought and behaviour, and educational methodology. For many years now he has been analysing the relationship between children and their urban environment, to which he has dedicated the international project, “The Children’s City”, launched in 1991, creating a laboratory that provides a new way of rethinking the city with children as the fundamental point of reference.