Can we learn from Reggio Emilia's anti-fascist project?
80 years of anti-fascist education and yet here we are.
If you love and share my writing, please consider supporting me as a paid member. I want to keep this newsletter mostly free and accessible, and you can help me do this!
In May 1945, a group of people from Villa Cella, a town on the outskirts of Reggio Emilia, in the Northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, sold a war tank, three lorries and six horses and with the proceeds, they got to work to build what they called a ‘self-managed preschool’ for the children of the town.
This was not the first Reggio school, but it was a rebirth since being shut down by Mussolini’s Fascist regime. The Italian Women’s Union (UDI) helped support the building of several more of these schools, all over the region, and eventually in 1963 the socialist local government of Reggio Emilia began setting up a network of government-funded schools.
They had a radical project: to create an educational setting where adults and children worked together, felt heard and respected, and where democracy prevailed over authoritarianism.
In the wake of the fall of Fascism, this felt like an urgent mission. And so the Reggio Emilia approach was born, from the literal ashes of a brutal fascist regime, a crippling war and the subsequent terror of occupation. When the Nazi army retreated, they left a lot of their arms and war machines behind. It’s quite fitting that some of these were sold to finance the start of a movement that viewed the practice of democracy in early childhood as a crucial vehicle to rebuild a just society, and fight a potential future return of authoritarianism.
And so following April 25th, which is Italy’s Liberation Day and commemorates the victory of the Italian resistance over fascism and Nazi occupation, I wonder how we now find ourselves back under a fascism-light government (both in Italy, and here in the US). How did we manage to come almost full circle?
This is not my area of expertise and I won’t pretend to have any insight, but as I reflect on the radical ideas of Reggio post-World War II, I can’t help but land on Reggio’s insistence on the ‘100 languages of children,’ and recognise that this perhaps applies to Italy, to my country, too. The founders of the Reggio project were onto something big: they recognise dthat children - and people - live, learn, love and exist in a million ways and that all of those ways can be valid and co-exist.
Because “Italians” are actually a relatively recent construction, and because my ancestors have alternated between being conquered and conquering, and perhaps because what we call Italy is still so divided, so tied to regional identities rather than an imposed national one, because of all this and more that I won’t pretend to understand, perhaps rather than sit in the uncomfortable truth of our 100 hundred languages, we have tended to fall prey to strong men and strong women. Our soul is not really a national soul, but a splintered, complex, milllion truths soul - and perhaps because of that, we fall prey to a rhetoric that helps us believe we are in fact one. To impose a unified, fascist soul upon us. Or perhaps, it’s just that humans everywhere can be manipulated by this facile, convenient narrative?
At this point I acknowledge how actually ignorant I am of my own country’s history, and that the above is simply speculation. So let me return to something I’m actually pretty knowledgeable about: education.
, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4962747){kind=link}
This is precisely what the Reggio Emilia philosophy was born to combat, and what it continues to do, in spite of history seeming to repeat itself. The citizens of Villa Cella had the explicit goal of raising children who would not be silent when and if fascism began to creep in again, like they recognised that they had been.
I am not so naive as to believe that an early childhood system rooted in social justice will raise children who won’t eventually fall prey to fascist rhetoric. There are so many factors at play here. And I recognise our adult tendency to always want to believe our children will be better and do better than us, if only we prepare them better. I’m not sure it’s really that simple.
However, I think it is reasonable to believe that democratic education - whether it is Reggio or any other form of education that centres democracy - plays an important role in building a democratic society.
Democracy in the early years is seen as a crucial element of creating an environment where children and educators can express opinions freely, be themselves, and collaborate in a bigger project of reimagining society. Democratic schooling is seen by many educators as an essential pillar of a democractic society. This is not a niche issue! This is a well-researched issue in the field, it simply hasn’t reached policy-makers and the broader education system.
The pedagogy of Reggio Emilia is considered to be a democratic project of early years education, that sees children as ‘rich’, whole, capable people and co-constructors of knowledge and of their own unique views of the world. It is a pedagogy that deeply respects children, and their right for self-expression, participation and community; its emphasis is on an on-going, equal dialogue between children, adults and environment which acts “as a process of transformation where you lose absolutely the possibility of controlling the final result.” I love this sentence so much because it is the opposite of our current system which explicitly aims to mould and shape children into future workers, and has very specific end goals.
Imagine an education that releases control over who children should be and who they will become.
Reggio is seen as a potential vehicle for democratic participation and democratic practice in the early years, because of its ability to put experimentation, openness and relationships between practitioners and children, and also its focus on local, culture-specific solutions to local problems.
I am not uncritical of Reggio. Its democratic ethos does not always match up with the right for children to participate in the larger decisions that affect their lives. Adults are still very much in charge of a young child’s education and children are not always involved in larger decisions about curriculum, pedagogy and running of the school.
Is democratic early years provision really the solution for children’s rights to participation, when it still feels like children are removed from our biggest decisions? This is definitiely something we should ask ourselves.
Emphasising democratic values in Early Childhood Education, along the lines of the Reggio pedagogy, also establishes power dynamics between children and practitioners that are based on collaboration rather than top-down coercion, and that are inclusive rather than marginalising. This could be conceived of as power rooted in collaboration and partnership, and seen as a way to increase and encourage children’s participation through free expression, autonomy and partnership.
Some researchers see the decolonisation and deconstruction of Early Childhood Education as bringing forth a culture where multiple ways of knowing and being are envisaged, and where the emergence of a liberating, democratic third space begins to take shape, where the creation of knowledge becomes something that all people can engage in.
To an extent, Reggio is an anomaly. Its network of care has not expanded to the rest of Italy, or beyond. There are Reggio-inspired schools around the world, but they are often missing something crucial: they tend to be private and relatively elitist. It is so crucial to remember that at its inception, Reggio was never meant as an elitist project, and it currently continues to exist as a municipally-run project.
The first ever Reggio school was set up in 1860, with the explicit aim of caring for children of families living in poverty. In 1913 this project was taken up by the Reggio Emilia municipal government and became publicly funded, accessible to all. After its post-Fascist rebirth, Reggio more explicitly endorsed a culture of participation, of learning and knowledge as subjective and collaborative, and of building an emerging culture that is place-based and democratic and involves the entire community.
Reggio-inspired preschools exist all over the world now, and I can’t speak for all of them. But many of the ones I have encountered are private and tend to cater to wealthier (sometimes mostly white) families. No school outside of Reggio Emilia, can in fact be a Reggio school, because Reggio is rooted in a specific culture and was never really meant as an export. I’m not going to launch into a critique of the depoliticisation and privatisation of Reggio that I have noticed, but perhaps that will be for another day.
I wanted to share the origins of the Reggio project because I believe that early childhood education is a site of hope and resistance, and also because as someone with one foot in academic research on education and the other in divesting from schooling, its a tricky place to be at times.
Reggio explicitly claims not to have an agenda about who children will be, while also explicitly being an anti-fascist project.
I struggle to hold both those things at once: it’s possible, but it isn’t always easy.
That’s probably why I chose (or perhaps my children chose for me!) consent-based, self-directed education: sure, I’ll raise my children in a home that engages with these ideas, but I will always fall short of raising a child who is anti-fascist - not because I don’t hope my children will in fact speak up when they see injustice, but because I recognise I don’t get to decide who my children will be.
And so I recognise my role is to show them a mother who speaks up, right now. Why do we think raising children to do things differently will work if they don’t see us doing those things, right now, in the present?
Yes, raising anti-fascist people is a good thing. Yes, having projects that facilitate this is also good. We don’t need Reggio in the US, but we do need an explicitly anti-fascist, democratic and social justice-based network of care and education that is accessible to all. Reggio could serve as a template but it won’t be it because this is not post-Fascism Italy.
But also, doing the work right now as adults is perhaps even more impactful. It is our job, after all. One of my strongest beliefs is that my children need to see me, and possibly more adults, doing the things. Embodying the values. Preaching less and acting more.
Let’s get to work, my friends.
Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts below!
How do we push back on our current political situation? Is education the key? How do you feel about Reggio v. any other framework? I’d love to know.
Fran x
Some resources you might like to explore (some of these are linked in my piece):
The Hundred Languages of Children. Lella Gandini, George Forman, & Carolyn Edwards.
In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia. Carla Rinaldi.
Transformative Change and Real Utopias in Early Childhood Education. Peter Moss.
Soto, L. D., & Swadener, B. B. (2002). Toward Liberatory Early Childhood Theory, Research and Praxis: Decolonizing a Field. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 3(1), 38-66. https://doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2002.3.1.8
Diana Sousa & Laura Oxley (2024) Moving towards critical democracy: democratic spaces in the Portuguese early years classroom, Educational Review, 76:3, 544-560, DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2022.2042204
This is so well written and so important for the times we live in. I have always been interested the Reggio Emilia style of learning, so it's fascinating to learn about its anti-facist roots.
I also love where you stated "but I will always fall short of raising a child who is anti-fascist - not because I don’t hope my children will in fact speak up when they see injustice, but because I recognise I don’t get to decide who my children will be." Such an important approach to parentig. I feel like so many parents are trying to raise their children to have their exact beliefs / interests, whereas the truth is that our children are entirely their own people.
This was interesting to read, I've always admired Reggio Emilia but you're right that mostly the art/projects get taken as inspiration and not so much the democratic elements. Sounds similar to Playcentre in NZ, which was set up in the 1940s. Not every Playcentre is great at putting it into practice but in theory the children are supposed to be involved in decision making.