San Miniato's approach to the education of children

The issue of children’s identity and of their potentialities remains a topic that is mainly neglected. Policy attention typically never focuses on this perspective and it usually only looks with interest at children in connection with social disadvantage, even though economists have emphasised that investing in children represents a promise for a higher level of development and economical wellness in our societies.
That is why, in the experiences of many countries around the world, many ECEC services are still ‘poor services for poor children and poor families’. Even when disadvantage becomes a public focus, the interest remains marginal in tackling the only way to alleviate disadvantage and its intergenerational reproduction, which is the investment in the potential of early childhood.
In this context San Miniato’s experience of early childhood education emerges as a consequence of a number of concurrent and privileged factors such as; the political responsiveness that has always been constant, the richness of scientific and pedagogical elaborations that have supported the development of experiences and the vigour and energy that the local community has been able to express in taking the responsibility for the education of its youngest citizens.
The protagonism of children in the processes of growing, learning and developing relationships, and the robustness of the protagonism that is evident in every situation where they are afforded opportunities for rich experiences, together signify distinctive and characteristic features of ‘San Miniato’s approach’ to children’s education.
In this way – in the end –the idea takes shape that recognising children’s identity and their potentialities forms the basis of building a project for education in which the richness of opportunities (not necessarily related to cost) becomes the core of a curriculum that is open to possibilities.
The volume tries to share these experiences through words, images and with audio-visual materials that are collected and shared in the accompanying and complementary DVD. We wish that these materials and thoughts can support a deep understanding of the experiences and exchanges which over time have matured our capacity for reflecting, developing and changing.


Aldo Fortunati is President of the Research and Documentation Centre on Childhood La Bottega di Geppetto in San Miniato and is the Director at the Istituto degli Innocenti in Florence. As an expert in early childhood education and policy he has realised training activities, has directed research programmes and has developed innovative and experimental approaches to planning in ECEC which influence and are used across Tuscan, national and international settings.