Break the lines!
Alessandra Straniero
This article addresses the life and work of Margherita Zoebeli with particular reference to her work in Italy in the aftermath of World War II. Creator of an educational system «designed in the field» of the ravages of war, she worked to shutter the static geometries of frontal teaching for the benefit of a new idea of education and of community, working towards the inclusion of children with disabilities at school, as well as honouring the embryonic adult in the child, thus anticipating the experiments that would follow in the field of pedagogy by 25 years. The experience of the Italian-Swiss Educational Centre (CEIS) in Rimini, which was designed together with the architect Felix Schwarz in 1946 and is still active today, shows in its architecture and organization of space an educational principle and the transcending of directive and authoritarian pedagogy. Hers is the lucid vision of a community in which cooperation and the transversal sense of responsibility of all the individuals who are part of it express the prodromes of a model of inclusion whose legacy is for us a duty to follow up on in order to establish a pedagogical approach capable of overcoming the most deeply rooted social barriers.
Keywords
Margherita Zoebeli, CEIS, Inclusion, Community, Difference.
