Il Corrierino or Corriere dei Piccoli, represented an Italian excellence, giving prestige to the great Italian pedagogical tradition, which from Agazzi to Montessori continues to be a beacon ofworld education. In fact, the schools abroad still inspired by those homegrown methods and models of a century ago! Often, however, Italians forget this and look to distant models, culturally and anthropologically, to sweep a tradition that for decades has pushed, from generation to generation, to problematize a great virtue in the world of slogans and mechanization. We take our training for granted, which is free and aimed at everyone, but if one leaves Europe, one realizes the heritage it represents and how today's defects derive more from "apes" of other overseas systems, which not from the maintenance (duly updated) of a great educational tradition.
Today the Corriere dei Piccoli would turn one hundred and ten years old
Corriere dei Piccoli, founded by Paola Lombroso, pedagogist daughter of the founder of Italian Psychiatry, would be 110 years old, Cesare Lombroso. Of Lombard-Venetian Jewish origin, the 35-year-old Paola, at the beginning of the century, was looking for an Italian newspaper willing to offer her organization and professionalism to develop her project. He meets on his way, after some refusals, the far-sighted Luigi Albertini, Director of Corriere della Sera. In 1908 the first issue came out. The idea is to treat children as persons not inferior to adults, simply on a different, parallel level, which deserves absolute respect and dignity. The right to respect and dignity in the enlightened bourgeois Europe of Belle Epoque (tragically interrupted by the Great War) is "embodied" in the right to be in-formed.
Information is a source of freedom, emancipation and culture. Then children come into contact with scientific information, fun and recreational stories and food for thought on history and current events. All with many illustrations, which bring the figures to the news of the greats, as in the idea of the great historical popularizers of the time: Gombrich e VanLoon. The sources come from the analysis of the great European newspapers of the time, the stories also come from the USA, such as Mickey Mouse.
The history of the Corriere dei Piccoli
With the advent of Fascism, Luigi Albertini, who should also be remembered as a historian, law expert and diplomat, was forced to abandon the direction of Corriere. In the meantime, several imitations of the Corriere dei Piccoli were born, from the same newspapers that had not believed in the idea of offering information to children. The success is so great that the founder, after four years, leaves her baby and returns to devote herself to new pedagogical projects. One of these will be the construction of "rural libraries", encouraging urban children to donate their books to poorly literate children in rural marginal areas, also allowing urban children to visit the countryside, stimulating a great exchange between the center and the periphery. to which the Italian school model owes a lot. After the Second World War, the Corriere dei Piccoli will enjoy a second life, reaching up to 700.000 editions in the 70s.
The Epilogue of the Corriere dei Piccoli and a certain way of being attentive to the little ones
They will write to us Dino Buzzati, Italo Calvino, Gianni Rodari (some of their main works find their first space on the Corrierino to make themselves known). The Pimpa of Altan, the philosopher dog who accompanied the children of the 80s and 90s, was born on the Corrierino, to then develop a long life of her own. The great experience of Corriere dei Piccoli ended in 1996, at the dawn of a world that is increasingly informed, but not trained, increasingly complicated but flat, with growing difficulty in grasping the complexity and the problems.
A world affected by functional illiteracy and returning illiteracy, affecting large sections of the Western population. Children are not just small "easy" consumers, or small "objects of worship" to be protected. Their conscience is the conscience of the citizens of tomorrow, it must be listened to and accompanied with attention, it concerns everyone. The problem is not solved with cameras or easy school liquidations, but with genuine attention, with books, culture and experiences. None other than Federico Fellini, defined the Corrierino as his first source of inspiration.
