"What nonsense and irresponsibility," I thought when I read Francesco Tonucci saying that “Children should go to school alone at age six”. However I wanted to give his statements a chance because after the unreal headline used in the interview commented a few days ago by Eulàlia Torras I thought it could be a similar case. I was not too wrong.
Francesco Tonucci is an Italian psychologist of renowned prestige, among other things, for carrying out in Fano, his hometown, the “City of Children” project in 1991, which has later been extended to other cities in the world.
With such an experience behind him it is easy to guess where he is going when he says that a six-year-old boy has to walk only in the street. Not that I should, imperative verb, is that I should be able to.
We have taken autonomy from children
Tonucci says that children have lost a lot of autonomy over time. In our childhood we had much more freedom than now since there was not always an adult who controlled our time.
We could play freely and we could take risks that are now unthinkable for a child, basically because he is always with his parents, with a teacher or with a tutor in extracurricular activities:
I am not talking about serious danger, but about the satisfaction of putting on evidence, that something I did not get yesterday, maybe today. That means satisfaction and frustration, and both are essential for growth.
As he says, many of the current ills of youth are due to the fact that children hatch late, with too much desire to live everything they have not been able to do under the tutelage of adults.
Adults take it for granted that children are unable to do something for themselves and steal part of their autonomy with an excess of protection, restricting the autonomy that they almost shout for.
The Children's City project
One of the proposals of the “City of Children” project is that children go to school alone with their classmates from 6 years old, without adults to accompany them.
As Tonucci comments "It is absolutely possible, they handle very well controlling traffic" and explains that parents often get upset when they hear that proposal, because “They have the idea that 'my son is dumb and I have to protect him'”. Then, when they realize that their children are capable of doing so, they are the first amazed and happy.
Advocate for listening more to the little ones and take them into account. The cities, once spacious, have been transformed into gray seas of asphalt, designed for cars but not for people or children.
Yesterday we lived in the street. Today we almost ran away from her. Yesterday was our playmate, today is just A means to get somewhere.
Adults in the eyes of a child
The world of children and that of adults has separated. Formerly adults spent little time with children, but were present "in the rules and norms that we internalized".
Now they are still absent, but the rules have disappeared in many cases "And children have no rules or self-control, they do not develop instruments of life."
Conclusion
After reading the interview and getting to know Francesco Tonucci a little more, I dare to affirm that the correct phrase for a headline is: Children should be able to go to school alone if they wanted to.
The problem is that, in my view, they cannot. The world is not intended for them. There are fewer and fewer green areas, more and more dangers and the feeling of citizen insecurity is important. That is why there are people like Tonucci, who fight for cities to work to declare themselves "City of Children." That's why he struggles to make the world a better place for children to grow and develop freely, soaking up life and society from their point of view and not from that of the adult, with less control, with more ability to make mistakes and learn from mistakes.
The touch of attention is widespread: “The world we leave our children is worse than the one we receive and is very serious”.
I think like all parents who read this article will think: Six years? Alone? However I fully agree with Francesco Tonucci that we should fight together to make a place in our society so that children grow up with more autonomy, more play and less control. Children should be able to play in the street as we did.
