Bridging Worlds… Through the Children – Part II

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All agreed to repeat the calls every few weeks. There are so many differences to discover, and stories to share. Most Italian schools are in session from 8:15am to 1:15pm, Monday through Saturday (yes, Saturday). Children eat at home, each day, with their families, who take breaks from 1pm to 4pm—la pausa pranzo, they call it. Family unity is highly valued—molto importante—to the Italian culture. A child’s elementary school teacher becomes like a second mother, staying with the same class from 1st through 5th grade. The children call their teacher by her first name—Chiara’s is Maestra Rossana. Students have few, if any, extracurricular activities in their school day (no library time, art, music, or recess, for example). But they learn to write in cursive in the first grade, and are already doing multiplication in the second.

“Sicily is an island which has been invaded 13 times over its 3,000-year history. It has a love-hate relationship with the outside world… and holds tightly to its cultural identity,” notes Sally, who besides being a mother, also founded Hands-On Sicily and organizes cross-cultural exchanges. “It was wonderful to see both sets of kids feeling great about themselves and about what their culture has to offer, and be so enthusiastic about the experience.” As with any new connection made, hearts open. Souls stir. Questions form. Minds expand.

In the second Skype call, conducted the week after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the students shared their dreams for 2010. The Americans, predictably, dreamed BIG—wanting to end all wars, stop world hunger, and assure that each poor person and every lost animal would have a caring, loving, well-furnished home. The Sicilians’ desires were more earthly—bicycles, pets and home computers.

“It is fascinating to follow the two educational systems,” notes Sally. “Beginning with the language itself, Italian, being 100% phonetic (you write it precisely as you hear it), trains you to have a more direct relationship with the world—in short, to listen, and to distinguish every single letter that comes off your lips. Even the double consonants have distinct sounds to an Italian ear—the double “r” rolling, for example, whereas the single one rolls right on by.” Farro is a type of grain, for example. Faro means lighthouse. And farò (with the accent on the second syllable) means “I will do (it).”

Most of us have had no reason to note that to learn to write in English, one has to memorize. Listening, as such, gets you only a certain distance. Ate and eight, for example. Wait and weight. Poor and pour. Their, there, and they’re. The result is that the memory circuits in the brain, not just the ear, need to be engaged to write properly in English, and the context of the phrase needs to be understood. In Italy one is trained to count on their senses—i.e., their hearing—to understand, completely. The foundation of their language, and by result, their culture itself, is sensual. Eyes. Ears. Nose. Skin. Taste.

What originally brought Chiara and Sally to Italy? They have many relatives there (Sally’s mother is of Sicilian descent), and Sally wanted to raise Chiara to be bicultural. “In the first year of life,” Sally explains, “a baby develops its ear… tuning its filter to the sounds that it will pay attention to. Offering a newborn two languages literally opens them up to more of the world around them.”

Chiara began school at the scuola materna (literally translated as “motherly school”) of Marina di Ragusa, Sicily—a combination of nursery school and kindergarten. “Our small beach town had sparse facilities, at best… but the children thrived. I loved their recitals,” Sally said enthusiastically. “They were complex and original. The children would learn up to a dozen songs each… and give long recitations. We’re talking about tiny little kids here. Three. Four. Five years old. Learning through song and story have been traditional schooling methods since recorded history, and are still in the foreground in rural Sicily.”

In small Italian towns, friendships that form in early elementary school years often stay intact for 40 or 50 years—forming one’s comitiva, social group for a lifetime. “Emotional consistency and security is a primary cultural value—keeping traditions alive, even family recipes intact,” jokes Chiara’s mother, “whereas in America, we are renowned for our action-orientation, technology, and ability to transform the world around us. Italians marvel at this.”

Mrs. Lynn’s second grade class is quickly becoming part of the fabric of this distant Italian society. And they will have a chance, if they’d like, to cultivate this seed of diversity newly planted in our fertile Chatham soil, adding another spice to our traditional country-city mix.

Arrivederci! Until we meet again!

Sally M. Veillette
sally@handsonsicily.com

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