This presentation is the outcome of field research in an Italian public library between 2012 and 2013. In 2007 this library opened in a suburb of one of the biggest northern Italian cities. The library’s mission is to promote intercultural education, which makes sense as the immigrant population continues to grow. The focus of this research is twofold: the quest for an ideal model of public place for intercultural education and the search for an Italian cultural model of education, and hence intercultural education.
Some well-respected Italian researchers have pointed out that since the concept of intercultural education had been broadly introduced into schools over a 10-year timespan, that the challenges of the initial learning phase have already been overcome. Therefore, the next step should be to open society to this interactional model and promote intercultural communication among all people (Favaro, Luatti, 2008, 45). In particular, school children would benefit from a broadening of the concept of intercultural education. Given the theme, the fact that the after-school lives of immigrant children are not well studied in Italy (Luatti, Melacarne, 2012, 169) is crucial. The research aims to identify a public place to engage in intercultural education.
The second part of the research focuses on culture. Researchers have examined Japanese classroom culture and how immigrant children react to it (Shimizu and Shimizu, 2001). The researchers found that Japanese classrooms could have two apparently differential but compatible directions: strong peer pressure on one hand and freedom permitted to children to promote their autonomy on the other. The teachers who were interviewed for the research suggested that the focus on freedom and autonomy may have resulted from the child-centered pedagogy that was embraced in Japanese schools.
In fact, child-centered pedagogy, guided by the national curriculum, was introduced broadly in Japanese schools in the 1980s. Based on the study of British sociologist B. Bernstein, Shimizu and Shimizu (2001) argue that this child-centered pedagogy model tends to isolate the problems of single pupils from the context and so individualises relative responsibilities in a way that increases the child’s difficulties. The most resounding and original finding of this study, however, was that immigrant children were always invisible, despite their alterity and legitimate difficulties.
One possible interpretation could be that this “invisibility” is caused by general ruck of interaction between children, and between children and their teachers. Japanese cultural studies have indicated that peer pressure is mostly based on non-verbal codes, which may act to further limit communications. On the other hand, the child-centered pedagogy could prevent teachers from directly intervening in interactions between children. In such a cultural setting of Japanese schools, the strategies that immigrant children may employ to react to peer pressure may negatively influence their school achievement and advancement.
The two-pronged research focuses on the search for an interactive cultural education model. Italy has been selected as a case study. While European countries introduced the intercultural education model in the early 1990s, Italy’s transition occurred later and it occupies a unique space as a late adapter of the intercultural education mode (Tarozzi, 2012) Italy can achieve cultural interaction, without interference from laicité, or secularism, (France) or previous experiences of segregation (Germany). Nevertheless, there is some naturally occurring segregation in Italy that does put limits on the intercultural model. A public library was chosen for the field of research, which is designed to be a public place for all.