Abstract
In this chapter the urban dimension of education is explored through a research among the men educators working in the municipal nursery schools (caring and educational institutions for children from 6 months and 3 years of age) of Hilltown (Italy). The research project was carried out between 2014 and 2015, and dealt with the notion of diversity by focusing on the issue of gender and how it is understood and practically interpreted by men in a traditionally “feminized” context such as the nursery school. The findings from the narratives of six men educators are here presented and discussed against the history of the institution and the debate concerning the intertwining of care and education, as well as the formation and role of care workers. The narratives highlight how each educator constructed a recognizable professional identity by acquiring knowledge and practice through a form of “situated learning” that brought them from apprenticeship to effective educational agency. Furthermore, the narratives emphasize the men’s valorization of personal choices, memories and social experiences they refer to when creatively attending to the children’s needs and promoting their learning and independence.
To Aylan and to all the children who lost their life while trying to have a life.
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Notes
- 1.
In this sense, urban education deals with what (poverty, prejudice, racism, social exclusion, among others) prevents people from being full members of a collectivity and what (active initiatives, ad hoc policies and project, etc.) will instead reinstate their membership by recognizing and realizing their rights. Since civitas cannot but evoke its connection with civilization, I hasten to declare my awareness of how civilizations have too often been built on violence on, and subjugation of people.
- 2.
In Italian departments of education, those who will be responsible for educational and care work that is not carried out in classrooms and does not imply formal teaching are defined as educators (for a critical and well documented approach to this educational figure within Continental Europe and the Anglophone world’s relative unfamiliarity with it, see Cameron and Moss 2011). I need to add that the Italian literature on nursery school I consulted has two ways of presenting nursery school educators: because in Italian language nouns can (with some exceptions) be differentiated by gender, any time an author writes of “educators” in general terms (for instance, when presenting an educational perspective or theory), the masculine is used (l’educatore, gli educatori) according to the understanding that the choice of the masculine does not refer to actual men, but is rather characterized by a neutral or abstract undertone. It is in fact rare to read l’educatrice when the discourse does not concern a specific case or context (the exception I found is Catarsi 2008). On the contrary, when an author writes about a certain nursery school (or a number of them) and what takes place there in terms of educational practices, problems, initiatives, debates, we read of l’educatrice, le educatrici, because the linguistic (unavoidable) choice respects the fact that in those cases most educators are women.
- 3.
Hilltown is a fictional name that I chose to protect the privacy of those working in its educational institutions.
- 4.
Peter Moss’ stance is in accord with international law that considers a child as an autonomous individual person. However, doing ethnographic research in Padua (Italy) nursery schools, I could appreciate how the rights of children were seen by educators and policymakers (not to speak of cooks, since I was specifically focusing on meal time) in balance with the rights of parents to educate their sons and daughters according to the family philosophical or religious beliefs. With regard to the latter, see Council of Europe (2014), Signposts – policy and practice for teaching about religions and non religious world views in intercultural education, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, with particular regard to ch. 8, pp. 77–86. See also the Convention on the Rights of the Child http://www.ohchr.org. The Italian Constitution distinguishes between “juridical capacity” (capacità giuridica) and “acting capacity” (capacità di agire): the latter refers to those who, like minors, are not able to exercise their rights and require others – such as parents for the children – who do so in their name. Cfr. Ambrosini 2004.
- 5.
The personal and professional trajectories of nursery school men educators will be illustrated and interpreted through the narratives I collected from them between 2014 and 2015, and from the informal observations of the nursery schools where they work.
- 6.
- 7.
I am old enough to remember when, in 1970, in the United States, a new front was opened up by the women’s movement, after the students’ and minorities’ movements of the end of the 1960s had succeeded in their demand that ethnic diversity be recognized and valorized, as well as that American society be acknowledged as multicultural. Not unlike the minority citizens, women electrified the social and political debate by demanding recognition of gender cultural specificity and arguing vigorously against what they defined as the outdated goal of female emancipation. Such cultural and political stance did not take long to cross the Atlantic ocean and come to Europe and to Italy.
- 8.
Ragazzini (2011, p. 86, my emphasis) indicts the “social conditioning” of professional roles and identities as “the main barrier” to “the emancipation of men in contexts where women have a dominant role”, where the word “emancipation” produces an unexpected second-wave feminist effect (cfr. Van Laere et al. 2014; emphasis mine) that is partially counterbalanced by the consideration that immediately follows, namely “the same is also valid for the integration of women in contexts where men have always occupied position of prestige” (idem, emphasis mine).
- 9.
The emphasis is mine.
- 10.
The emphasis is mine.
- 11.
The law further stated that Regions had to
“establish the general criteria for construction, management and supervison of the nursery schools”, through their own legislative acts, and see that nursery schools would
“respond to the needs of families concerning [nursery schools’] location and functioning”,
“be managed with the participation of families and representatives of recognized local social organizations”,
“have enough qualified personnel, able to guarantee health and socio-educational assistance to children”, and finally
“implement technical, construction and organizational requirements for attaining the harmonious development of the children”.
- 12.
For a long time, the Italian State had delegated childhood care and assistance to philanthropists who understandably gave help to the poorest children. The first public intervention – O.N.M.I., the acronym of the Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia (National Charity for Maternity and Childhood) – took place in 1925 (3 years after Mussolini took power) and aimed to promote and support both families and the birth rate according to the then prevailing “mystique of motherhood”. To this purpose, the Fascist ideology depicted women’s destiny as delimited by the boundaries of the home. Needy and deserted mothers benefitted from the services of O.N.M.I. nursery schools, but child care was also organized in factories with more than 50 women as employees. The O.N.M.I. nursery schools had the task of providing children with assistance and health care more than with educational activities (Catarsi 2008). In 1971, most of the non-religious child care institutions still belonged to O.N.M.I..
- 13.
At the beginning of the 1970s, there was the last massive migration from Southern Italy and countryside areas to the regions of the so called “industrial triangle” (the Northern regions of Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria). People moved seeking better life conditions or in consequence of the 1968 earthquake that had ravaged vast areas of Sicily. The rise of urban population in the Northern cities and towns inevitably entailed greater needs for, and demand of social services.
- 14.
The 1970s, as Catarsi (2004a) points out, had been a decade of great social changes, when the Italian parliament legislated on divorce (1970), protection of motherhood and paid maternity leave (1971), family rights and spouses’ equality (1975), work equality and women’s access to jobs up to that time reserved for men (1977), abortion (1978). Three years earlier, as I mentioned, childhood schools for children between 3 and 6 years of age had been instituted by the Italian Parliament with law 444/1968.
- 15.
- 16.
The effort of Italian researchers and educators to combine forms of educational planning with the unpredictability of children’s potentials and uncertainty of pedagogical practices seem to anticipate the debate on the education and care “divide” (Van Laere et al. 2012), where a holistic viewpoint is argued and supported against the drive for “schoolification” of early childhood education and care (ECEC). In referring other researchers’ critical stance, these three authors stress how “working and dialoguing with children, families and local communities from diverse backgrounds are uncertain, value-bound practices which go beyond applying prescribed teaching methods”, and propose a normative conceptualization based “on a broad and integrated understanding of care, well-being, learning and pedagogy which values reciprocal relationship and an element of not-knowing” (Van Laere et al. 2012, p. 528; emphasis in the original).
- 17.
Here and in other passages I use the term pedagogy according to its English use and meaning. In Italian the word would be education, as pedagogy (pedagogia) indicates the theoretical elaboration of the educational action.
- 18.
- 19.
See footnote 16.
- 20.
Depending on the municipal regulations, babies as young as 3 months can be “integrated” (inseriti) in a nursery school and during what is informally called “time for integration” (periodo di inserimento) the mother is at the side of her son or daughter until he/she feels at home and trusts the educator. In Hilltown such process is defined as “setting-in” (informally, periodo di ambientamento).
- 21.
- 22.
The expression “blue quotas” obviously refers to men through the color (blue) traditionally assigned to baby boys. Baby girls have traditionally been assigned the color pink, therefore in Italy we speak of “pink quotas” when new, or more openings for women in social, economic and political positions are debated and demanded.
- 23.
They work in nursery schools coordinated and managed by the cooperative association Malavasi is a member of.
- 24.
Burgess (2012) also shares Malavasi’s concern and interpretation.
- 25.
According to Catarsi (2008), the limited attention to the nursery school educators’ formation and specific competencies could depend on the fact that for a long time they have been likened – if not assimilated – to the mother’s figure.
- 26.
A critical reflection about the increase of men in German educational services questions whether a greater involvement of men in those contexts might not paradoxically result in bringing back the issue of gender “to the so called ‘natural differences’ and impose a more stereotyped behavior of men and women, boy and girls?” (Rohrmann 2012, p. 11).
- 27.
Interestingly, articles on gender education acknowledge the changes obtaining in society and the family with regard to gender roles and responsibilities, but at the same time they underline how current ideas of masculinity and femininity too often follow traditional or stereotyped categorizations, on the one hand, and on the other they point out the prevailing belief, in the family and in school, that education should be “neutral”. Thus, “gender education is mainly carried out through forms of unthinking practice “(Trufarelli 2013, p. 341) and gender “neutrality” acts as a “veil” that hides the persisting gender hierarchy (idem). See also Ghighi 2009a, b; Rossi 2009. A comprehensive presentation of the topic is in Gamberi, Di Maio, Selmi, Educare al genere, Carocci, Roma, 2003.
- 28.
It seems to me that Malavasi’s argument also succumbs to essentialization when she stresses the need for “many more male teachers as ‘ambassadors’ of a further, new, possible, educational model” (2010, p. 13).
- 29.
On this point, see Rubio’s presentation of the special issue of Bambini in Europa, 2012.
- 30.
For an update on the Nordic countries, and Norway in particular, see Askland 2012.
- 31.
Their names are fictional to protect their privacy.
- 32.
As will be learned from the men’s narratives, the specificity of those educators’ personal and professonal trajectories cannot be exclusively attributed to their gender, since I am sure that similarly rich and vivid narratives could be collected from women educators.
- 33.
On this particular point see also Gobbo, (2016).
- 34.
Riccardo and Edoardo also hold university degrees. Renato is working on his thesis.
- 35.
About the Educational Coordination Office, see Catarsi (2010).
- 36.
Some nursery schools have a small vegetable garden in their backyards that children are invited to tend, and in one of them (that will be the object of a different text) berry shrubs and hedges of aromatics were planted by the man educator so that children could develop their senses of smell and taste.
- 37.
The foursome seems to validate the European research findings, according to which most men who enter careers traditionally hegemonized by women and defined as gender-specific, such as childcare, have “retought careers” (Vandenbroeck and Peeters 2008).
- 38.
Acknowledging the persisting feminization of care work and education, Cocever ((2014) writes “educators” in the feminine (educatrici).
- 39.
The more experienced women colleagues had set the rules that had become almost “naturally” institutionalized. To go counter those rules – as Riccardo did – meant not so much affirming a gendered point of view but placing the children – their needs and potentials – at the center of caring and educational action.
- 40.
Scheffler’s elaboration on human potential could provide a fruitful, open-ended interpretation of the personal and professional realization these men attained in nursery school work (see Scheffler 1985).
- 41.
The surprise and the “waves” these men educators made in the nursery school environments evoke the unpredictable man educator who is the main character of director Marco Ferreri’s movie Chiedo asilo (Seeking asylum) (1979). The word asilo in Italian indicates both the shelter and the nursery school, conveying the historical notion that the places where needy children were hosted had protection as their major goal. Ferreri obviously played with the double meaning of the word.
- 42.
Though aware of the issue of pedophilia, families never raised it. On the contrary see Peeters (2012).
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Gobbo, F. (2017). Bringing Up the Babies: Men Educators in the Municipal Nursery Schools of an Italian Town. In: Pink, W., Noblit, G. (eds) Second International Handbook of Urban Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40317-5_65
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