Map of the Organization of the Experience

Glossary

Bibliography

PREFACE

Going back to being children or as M.Luzzi says "at the beginning of their growth" is often a painful and difficult road to maturity, but it can often change us in fascinating and meaningful ways.Children are, in fact, the key to the mystery of man's life on earth.When man loses his way which starts with childhood or which leads back to it, he loses contact with himself and with his condition as a human being. In extreme situations such as war, symbiosis, terror, ecstasy, failure and success man can only save himself by always keeping children in mind. If childhood is instead denied, man risks becoming alienated and brutalized.Therefore, it is obvious that governments would most decidedly change their policies if children were taken into consideration more. If we listen to children and we respect them without being pretentious or arrogant, we will realize that they contain the essential qualities of mankind.However, in our relationship with children it is important to remember what H.G.Gadamer said, that the pretension of trying to understand another person in a very short time depends on the need to maintain a certain distance. In order to understand a child perhaps it is necessary to become small like him, to live with him and let him take the lead.
What does it really mean when we say that children are the key to the definition of human life ? It might be possible to say that going back to being children means going back to the place where one started, because it is well-known that one can live one's life fully only if one starts again and is born again. In a period in which childhood was not taken into consideration at all, Jesus of Nazareth said courageously and clearly that nobody could understand and enter the kingdom of God, or in other words become a real man or woman, without becoming a child again. However, this is not simply a metaphor; every human being has inside himself or herself a child and only by giving birth is it possible to be fully re-born. This is a way to voice one's emotions regarding life's experiences of pain, anger, bewilderment, boldness, curiosity, awkwardness, fear, pleasure, envy and jealousy, hatred and love. The miracle which unites experience and innocence takes place in the womb and it is this miracle which lets us carry out the most important choices in our life.
For me it has been an honour to supervise the project "Goccia-Genera" which I now have the pleasure of presenting. I think that the most prestigious aspect of this " action-research" is the opportunity it has given to the participants of learning, through the experience and the new knowledge they gained, that it is not possible to understand a child if one talks to him hastily and by looking down on him, and that difficult children do not exist, but only difficult relationships. No child can be fully understood if we do not try to understand the child we have inside us; to understand children we have to be fully involved: body and soul, eyes and ears, breathing and movements and we have to maintain their rhythm, while preserving our own pace in life. This work has involved different nations in the world and this demonstrates how children are capable of communicating in and beyond any language and can, without difficulty, overcome all barriers. Combining the freshness of new experience with the rigour of competence, the imaginativeness aspect of storytelling and the respect for theory, the Project "Goccia-Genera" provides examples of relationships in which may be felt the ever-new, ever-fertile and ever-full and reciprocal spell of continuing dialogue between us and our children.

Giovanni Salonia

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