Years ago, I translated into Italian one of the lesser-known — but no less important — books penned by Matthew Fox. Its original title is The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human. We called it in Italian simply Educare alla meraviglia (“teaching through wonder”) because the original acronym, A.W.E. — meaning Ancestral Wisdom Education — would get lost in translation.
Last year, I learned from the director of the publishing house that this book is a best-seller for them. She said that it was a word-of-mouth chain among teachers that made it so.
Last month, I received an email from a woman I met years ago at a Creation Spirituality event. Paola — this is her name — told me that she just graduated in Religious Studies with a Master’s thesis based on the book itself.
So, last week, I convened a group of four women, including Paola — all teachers and pedagogues — to talk about her thesis and to see if some interventions in Italian schools could be organized. We could — for example — contact some teachers’ networks to propose a collaboration based on the contents of the A.W.E. book.
Yes, the book Educare alla meraviglia is popular, but still in small grassroots circles. The situation is desperate in the main because students of all grades in Italy are pressured to perform, and they are not educated to get in contact with nature or with their emotions. “There is no time” is the mantra.
The massive use of digital screens is raising a generation of people even more disconnected from their bodies than the previous ones. Put that together with the tradition of authoritarian pedagogy strongly embedded in the Italian state school system — Montessori was the revolutionary exception, not the rule — and you get the recipe for a disaster.
As Vanna Iori wrote on Avvenire — the Italian Catholic bishops’ newspaper — a few days ago: There is a time for everything. And the time of early childhood is the time of the body… Children must be able to play without being interrupted, without each of their life-moments becoming digitalized and “shared”. They have the right to an incarnate, real, alive infancy.
I learned just through this article — to my horror and dismay — that “digital education” has been anticipated and introduced into pre-school.
Iori continues saying: Children need time. They need slowness. Hands dirty with sand, collected rocks, invented stories, and makeshift constructions. They need grown-ups who know how to wait, observe, and marvel. They need a gaze which does not evaluate, but accompanies.
The problem is not just with the school, but with families who feel that everything is fine when the child is quiet in front of a screen. And it’s a whole civilization problem, as in the course of a few decades we moved from children freely roaming in their neighborhood to a strict family control of all their numerous and often competitive activities.
Matt’s book The A.W.E. Project is not just about children — as we will see in my next DM — yet it is in early infancy and up to puberty that the most damages are done. And where the most hope resides.
Being confronted — as we are today — with the onset of new fascist regimes is hard. The U.S.A. and Italy are living through a parallel — even if by no means identical — phase of this kind.
We want immediate relief from the absurdities that are happening. But in the long run, we stand no hope unless our children are educated to awe and wonder, to creativity, and to wisdom.
Also see Theodore Richards, Creatively Maladjusted: The Wisdom Education Movement Manifesto
Banner Image: Early conditioning: toddler with toy computer. Photo by Mahmud Ahsan on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
Do you see any parallel between the pedagogical situation in Italy and that of the countries where you live? How can you be involved in positive change on this matter?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human
Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ
7 thoughts on “Educating under the Shadow of Neo-Fascism (part one)”
Thanks, Luigi. An important meditation, especially in the time we are in awe of AI instead of nature. Education draws from within.
Amen! That contemplative spirituality within can also lead not only to more awareness of the sacredness of living physical nature, but also to include awareness of the sacredness of the subtle spiritual realms and beings around us wanting to commune with us. The revival of Incarnational Spirituality is clearly introduced to us by the books of David Spangler (lorian.org), especially “Journey into Fire” and “Partnering with Spirit.” Incarnational Spirituality tradition is intimately related to the Indigenous Spirituality of honoring the sacredness of living nature, angelic beings, our ancestors, and our sacred evolving Cosmos.
What I just read regarding A.W.E. (and I speak not just for myself but Dr. Dowely who started Stanford Bing Nursery School, St. Elizabeth Day Home S.J, Maria Montessori…) you reignited a flame we carried in the 1970’s. THANK YOU!!!! Children were free to move from a classroom to the outdoors to care for their chickens, rabbits, plant seeds, water their orchard and vegetable etc. They learned science, math,
etc. not through a computer but by experiencing it. Thank you for keeping this and so much more alive! Deanna
Montessori education is good, but so is Waldorf education! Talk about “hands dirty with sand, and collected rock!”
The situation here in Florida is desperate, with more and more censorship in the schools so that a whitewashed version of education is promulgated from the lower grades to university. Minorities’ history and even presence are being erased. “Don’t say gay”, for instance, is a reality. A voucher program is destroying the public schools, on top of that. Unless one is wealthy enough to afford a private school that allows freedom and respect for children, the alternative is home schooling. My daughter has taught both sons, and she is part of a cooperative, so that the children are exposed to a variety of “courses”, nature being a highlight. They have a little broadcast that they have put together themselves, and creativity in every area is strongly encouraged. They can follow their own interests to some degree. I just feel sad that the public school system appears to be dying. The aggressive and loud mothers have bullied school districts into removing many classics from school libraries. It is disgusting.
I invite readers to visit artsintegration.com
Good day to you,
This piece on education is so interesting. My grandchildren in Cape Town South Africa attend A Waldorf School which offers such holistic, nondigital education, Learners are able to develop at their own pace and are so aware of nature. They do gardening in the lower grades, learning about biodiversity, and have chickens and bunnies running freely around the campus. Music, dance art in all forms are experienced in a multicultural school, so learners become aware of different cultures, faiths etc , without judgement.
Many Blessings
Mary.