HCDA

Abstract proposal: The street teachers of Naples

Annual Conference New Delhi, 10-13 September 2008
Conference: Equality, Inclusion and Human Development

ABSTRACT PROPOSAL:
The street teachers of Naples
A proximity policy for the development of basic capabilities in disadvantaged young people

Key words: proximity relationship; democratic school; cultural and gender inequality; basic
capability approach.
Name: Salvatore Pirozzi
Affiliation: IUAV University of Venice
Contact: spirozzi@gmail.com;
Teleph. : 0039081422480; cell 00393336004461.
Address: Salita Petraio 34. 80127 Napoli, Italy
Short biography: Researcher at IUAV, Università of Venice, Public policies department.
My Ph.D disseration concerns “second chance school”, and in detail: “De-institutionalization
processes, agency and capability”.
I am a “street teacher” since 1998 and I am still working in popular districts as pedagogical and
didactic expert for disadvantaged young people. My attention is focused on possibility to build a
public school based on the basic capability approach to promote young’ and their family’s agency.
I am participating in many European projects to build a “public second chance school” against
poverty and cultural exclusion.
I trained many teachers and educators in Italy, Europe and Sao Paulo in Brazil.
I am one of the founder of the NGO "Street teachers" that helps young excluded people to build
their "projects for life".

THE STREET TEACHERS OF NAPLES

A proximity policy for the development of basic capabilities in disadvantaged young people

I know – inside me - where I can find you, when I need you…

A student who met a street teacher, some years later have finished school

A short paper presentation. Why we are here.

“Street teachers” usually reflect1 about their work. But they are not expert on economics, on
philosophy or on public policy, even if they deal with all these subjects and other more. So they
have no ability to synthesize their experience into a paradigm or a model (but they don’t believe
much in...). They have no theory; they have long practice2, many stories and many reflections about
their experimentation. They hope to offer interesting material to policy makers for good policies
and for an institutional learning. So how it was them asked for, at their mandate’s beginning.
We hope our experience is not only a local experimentation, but also a practice we could connect to
many others, to achieve a better efficacy. Above all, with regard to the capability approach.
In our experience, we have never used - until recently - capability approach as a preliminary

1 N.B. In these footnotes we won’t insert the bibliography on CA and italian language bibliography. We will quote
books and essays that help us to enrich our approach toward a CA approach.
Schön D. (1983), The Reflective Practitioner. How professionals think in action, Basic books, N.Y.
2 Certeau de M. (1980), L'invention Du Quotidien, Flammarion

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framing for our work. It wasn’t a cognitive resource of ours. But doing continuous sense-making3
about our activity, we have discovered that our project could be read as a CA, unaware, project.
Especially, to have come the CA along our cross has meant to enhance our perspective about the
aim to empower young people, their social context and their social asset. In addiction, we have
never thought to link educational field to capabilities development goal.
Ultimately, we are learning in this direction. Perhaps, we still consider youth just as simple
recipients and not as people that can choose and build their life. Now we are ready to consider
youth as subjects capable of agency and we are learning how to change Chance for this explicit
goal. Until now, perhaps, we have made project for people, not by people: this is now our deal.
What’s Napoli?
I know an Indian proverb: whatever you may say about India, the contrary is true as well.
Il could turn into a Neapolitan proverb too: whatever you may say about Naples, the contrary is
true as well.
In fact, I believe it’s truth also for Naples. Naples is an extraordinary city, which holds both old
and new contradictions. Many writers, Walter Benjamin for example, describe it as a porous and
multiversum city; a place where no modernization can destroys persistence.
What’s your imagination about Naples?
Pizza? Camorra? ’O sole mio? Garbage crisis? North? South? Richness? Poverty?
Each one of those are real. You cannot separate it in exact parts. Richness and poverty coexist side
by side. Poverty determines youth’s condition above all.
Poverty is an old persistence and it grows for globalization’s effects too. Often old and new poverty
add up. It is a city where poverty is an unsolved problem. Modern damages are added to ancient.
Where we work in
Chance is in action within 3 different metropolitan crisis areas:
Barra - San Giovanni, an old working class suburb, that ruined after the big earthquake of ’80 and
after the big manufacturing crisis;
Spanish Quarters, Historical Centre, the popular downtown where the “Camorra” was powerful and
now is strongly fighting for drug commerce;
Soccavo, a new illicit residential quarter that destroyed, in few years, the old rural economy and
way of life.
Three different areas, but very similar:
 One of the highest inhabitant density in UE
 Many un-healthy houses that are crumbling, often very small and below street level, with
bad sanitation
 Rented houses mainly
 Infectious diseases, higher than national rate
 One of highest head of household’s unemployment rate in Italy
 Black and illegal work, child labour
 Every kinds of drugs, pushing and use, within young people too
 Many broken windows and incivilities
 Little delinquency and organized crime

Equality/Inequality

3 Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations

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 Geographical Poverty ratio Poverty - Poor families’
area (%) thousands of geographical
families distribution (%)
North 5,2 595 22,7

Centre 6,9 315 12,0

South 22,6 1.713 65,3

ITALY 11,1 2.623 100,0

Several inequality forms hurt youth life. They suffer not only poverty, but many exclusion forms
too: it’s difficult learning; it’s difficult looking for a regular job; it’s difficult to have equal
opportunities for a young girl; it’s difficult safely growing.
I must tell in advance that a “second-chance school” is obliged to care to these different, linked
sides. It must be a holistic school. To cure and to care are indivisible sides of the same problem.
We are not expert on economics. We have some general quantitative data about “absolute poverty”
and many qualitative stories about our students’ economic environment and about their poverty
perception. We have to describe the anthropological culture and the illegal and black economy to
understand this world and we have to combine the two data to understand young’s behaviour
concerning money and goods.
We can’t cope with inequality if we don’t first fight poverty.
We have some statistical data on poverty that illustrates the heaviness of phenomenon. Without
fighting poverty, no capability development is possible; this condition is an absolute poverty status.
Child poverty and social exclusion exists in rich countries.

Some data about Italian case. Poverty and child poverty in Italy:

- 2 million 623 thousand families, 11,1% of the total of Italian families, live under the national
poverty line, 1 million 713 thousand in Southern Italy where social exclusion is concentrated,
22,6%.
- In the last ten years the % of families with five or more children that are poor has risen from
25,8% to 30,2% and in the South from 36,2% to 48,9% of the total of numerous families: more
children you have the poorer you tend to be.
- 1 million 301 poor families get their main income from one member who has had little education
as a young person: education is still an important factor of social protection and promotion.
- 7 million 537 thousand individuals - 12,9% of the total population - live under the national
poverty line… but 1 million 809 thousand of these are under 18 years of age, 17,0%: the young and
very young are more at risk of poverty than the population as a whole.
In a country with one of the lowest birth rates in the world these are signs of severe crisis.

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It’s very clear that poverty is concentrated in Southern Italy and mainly in it’s cities.
And while poor children in Italy are 1 million 809 thousand, 17% of all Italian children, 70% of
them live in the South, 1million 245 thousand so that 1 child out of 3 is poor in Southern Italy:
Poverty in the Naples district:
In the Campania region - the broader district that includes the city of Naples and its surroundings -
the number of people that live under the national poverty line are 1.339.601 while in the whole
Northern part of Italy, that has a population about 6 times as big and a much larger territory, poor
people are 1.382.782.
Poor people in Campania are steadily between 21% and 27% of the regions total population, from
over 1/5 to over 1/4. And they are concentrated within the urban and coast area, namely the
provinces of Naples itself and Caserta.

Poverty and Poor Education

Direct links between poor education - and high dropping out rates - and poverty during lifetime are
a constant fact, well known all over the world.
Poverty tends to produce early school leavers and vice versa.
This is why the European Union has set a 2010 benchmark at 10% early school leavers for every
country of the UE.
Many will fail this benchmark for, as is now, the 27 member EU ratio of early school leavers is still
17,6%, Germany is 13,8%, the UK is 13%, France 13,1%.
But Italy as a whole is still at more than double the benchmark: 20,9%!
The Campania region is even in a worse situation: it has 28,8% of early school leavers. And Naples
city has about 34% of early school leavers and growing.
Exactly for these reasons a number of good practices promoting education and fighting early school
leaving have taken place in Naples. Chance is part of a
network of Italian second opportunity schools.

The network of “second-chance schools” is spreading in

Italy and there is an UE network too, thanks to several
attendances to UE projects against social exclusion and for
a new “second chance” school.
Regard this matter, we are re-considering literacy and
numeracy as tools for a full citizenship; we must overtake
the schooling perspective and its subjects, because literacy
covers all life people needing: work, rights, health
services, aspiring, well beings ...
But there is a more important and complicate approach to
this matter. Traditional school considers its culture as the
only “Culture”; and considers its mind-frames and its intelligence as superior or even the one form.
At once at our experience’s beginning, we learned that we were meeting other culture, other
languages, other knowledge, and other mind-frames. We needed anthropological approach; we
needed to suspend our frames and to begin an “active listening”.
Streets teachers became ethnographers on field, they began to write for
understanding. They began to live in the community as its member.

Poverty’s perception
If we have absolute poverty, we must consider the perception of poverty by young too .
There is a dangerous vicious circle between poverty and compulsive consumerism. Global

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behaviours constrain young people to desire and to buy all the status symbol goods. In our social
and cultural context young people“must” buy brand articles like shoes, t-shirts, cell-phones …
mopeds.
There are some annual occasions, as rites, for inevitable and very expensive gifts: Christmas,
Valentine’s Day, engagements and their anniversaries. To not possess these goods is perceived as
poverty. It isn’t absolute poverty, may be, but it produces consequences more negative, may be,
than the real poverty.
These compulsive behaviour create the vicious circle where young try to have money by irregular
or illegal work or by gangs too. In this compulsive behaviour the school can’t have place and
learning isn’t considered important.
It’s difficult to separate economic suffering from psychologic suffering4. Our
“poor” youth is a depressed youth; young people oscillate from apathy to
violence. These needing are as obsession.
We cannot consider this poverty’s perception as a not absolute poverty,
because itsn’t possible they compare their status with poorer status.

How we fight against poverty; what does project offer?

We know the difference between positive and negative liberty 5. We think that
defeating poverty is an indispensable requirement for developing capability.
So, we know that school must be a public, free good.
In fact, Chance is a totally free service.
Family doesn’t pay anything to let their children attend school. But the school
trends tends to be a full time school (see below); it offers a lot of services that
must not be payd paid. Also all learning teaching materials (books, dvd,
exercise books (aggiungi s, sembra però una ripetizione perchè il primo books
è già inclusivo di exercise books), pens, sports and working clothes, school
trips, apprenticeships…) are free.
We discussed much about this matter, whether it was a good practice or not.
In neapolitan culture, often welfare is considered as charithy and it is criticized
because it gives rise to a dependency culture and passivity, that destroys
agency.
When (it must have decided) we had to decide the name for our “project”,
“chance” was chosen because project’s inventors wanted to underline the
users’ involvement, and they supposed their active participation. They wanted
to argue it was possibile possible to build a welfare state that could promote
the empowerment of users. Chance, in our vision, means “opportunity” and
only an aware will could takes its chance. We imagined users and their families
capable to estimate the opportunity. In fact, we decided that voluntariness was
the first criterion to select the “right” people. Chance started with big inner
paradoxes: on the one hand it was a policy against exclusion, on the other
hand it was obliged to select users and hence to exclude young people again.
On the one hand it wanted to be a person centered caring6 project, but on the
other hand it had to select “client” who were fitted for project’s resources.

4 Ehrenberg A. (1998), La fatigue d'être soi, Poches Odile Jacob;

Benasayag M., Schmidt G. (2003), Les passions tristes: Souffrance psychique et crise sociale, Editions La
Découverte;
Sennet R. (2003), Respect, The Formation of Character in a World of Inequality, The Penguin Press.
5 Berlin I. (1958), Two Concepts of Liberty,
6 Rogers C. (1951), Client Centred Therapy, Constable

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 Pact and pedagogical alliance
The pact between users and project has been the way to overcome paradox
and contradictions.
We know that exclusion is caused by many factors; and inclusion process too.
So we know, from the first moment, that we must activate all the possible,
public and un-official, actors to hope on success.
The pact’s signing is a public rite. In this occasion, all the authorities are
present, to underline the reciprocity of the pact. In the pact, each part commits
itself to reach the foreseen aims, to respect the agreed terms. In particular,
the project commits itself to support and to help young people in their whole
human development. When a crisis happens in the relationship, the pact may
be rewritten with new terms. The young parents, or their tutors (very often
many parents are dead or in prison or fled) are involved, because we know that
it is indispensable to build a social helping network, a social asset.
The everyday practices reveal the weakness of this approach.
In fact we suppose a basic capability that young people usually not ever have:
the resources to choose their path. They need to be helped to discover
themselves; they need continuous tutoring; they are past and environment’s
prisoners, between individual aspirations and social scripts. When it happens,
we have to fight against these scripts, because we think that individual person
self-determination is an universal right, as the Convention on the Rights of the
Child commands.
Continuously we try to develop a more believable involvement of policy makers
and Politics in the pact and in his respect to make their credibility grow. But it’s
quite a desperate job to make him understand
what to do, we are commanded to do a public
enterprise, but we are often alone as private citizens.
It’s the paradox of a public outcome without Public Authorities’
acknowledgement, learning, new better policies. May be we have to re-
consider our concept of public and our idea about “what’s public”7.
This is one of the most critical point about our mandate: how can we implement our knowledge to
politics and policies?
Other inequality factors. Cultural and gender discrimination
But inequality of incombe isn’t the only inequality.
We must fight against a strong socio-cultural factors of exclusion.
The inhabitants of the inner-city are considered almost as uncivilized citizens. According to
midclass’ and to politics’ pointview, they need to be educated about
“dominant” values to become a fulfilment person. It’s the long history of
civilization.
Bruno Latour argues that modernity has always been pedagogical and un-symmetric relationship
with the “Other”. The war too has always been a pedagogical way to spread its culture. But this
time is over, now. Now we need to dis-invent modernity and to invent an anti-pedagogical and
symmetric pedagogy8.

Particularly serious is the condition of young women: from their early age they are forced to do
housework, to attend to brothers and fathers. Often they imagine they will escape through early
7 Dewey J. (1927), Public and its problems
8 Latour B. (2005), Un monde pluriel mais commun, editino de l’Aube

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motherhood, but they reply their destiny only.
In their culture, precocious maternity is a widespread condition. We have a rate over 25% under
sixteen young mothers. On the one hand we comprehend this choice if we see it from the
stereotypes of multicultural-relativism paradigma; but if, on the other hand, we overcome it and
look at this phenomenon in a liberty frame, scenario changes. We agree with Nussbaum’s thesis: we
must intervene against an in deep-rooted culture too, fighting its pseudo-natural ideas about women
destiny.
We have learned to apply ourselves to listen to young women’s thoughts about maternity and
pregnancy; we have learned to respect their gossip and we are learning to involve ourselves in this
practice: in their culture – it’s still a primary orality culture - to gossip is a wau to build a
community knowledge. The boundaries between private and social talks are trespassed9.

A history of a young woman

…. between them there is a girl who has caught my attention, it’s passed some time since I
“run after” her, sometimes we meet by change in the neighbourhood’s alleys, but at times I
see Rosa at the official meetings Social Service request her to attend.
She looks like a very serious girl, always speaks in Italian, not in dialect, reads and writes a
quite correct language, and she would like to improve herself, but has a problem… she
really has two problems: her two younger sisters; it’s already passed a lot of time since her
parents separated, her mother has a shift-work in a canteen, so she has to manage their
house. Not long ago there was also another brother she had to take care of, but now he is
old enough to look after himself.
Every day she does her duty; in the morning she get up very early, prepares breakfast and
dresses her two little sister; after she take them to school, goes shopping, does housework
(in a very impeccable manner) and finally prepares lunch. In times she goes to pick-up the
sisters at school and all together, hand in hand, return home (often I saw them in this way).
Rosa also tell me that usually in the afternoon helps them with their homework, and then, if
her mother has already returned home, she can go all around the neighbourhood, “to while
away the time” and she doesn’t mind only her brother has allowed to use the moped,
because sometimes he needs it to help their father with his upholsterer’s shop. I always try
to convince her of the need to quit this vicious circle, remind her that in the future, looking
back, maybe she’ll have some regrets, but she always answer me with resignation: “ Maybe
you are right, but how can I do, I wish… but I can’t. I wish but it’s impossible”

We have learned to observe inter-gender conflicts, because often men’s jealousy is the main
obstacle for women self-determination. Often, fathers, boy-friends and brothers too hamper
women’s participation for Chance. School and literacy are not foreseen for them.
So, now we dedicate time to talk with both sexes to argue about maternity and free choice, about
love and sexuality; we organize a space for their young mother too, where they can reflect about
relationship with their daughter. The fathers are un-reachable.
But at the same time, we have learned to consider their homework as an important social-
reproduction factor, that our society must recognize but not force.

A short description of the “Chance- street teachers” project

Why “street teachers”?
“Street teachers”: so people and we ourselves name the Second
Chance School.
We’ll use both expressions as synonyms. In fact, Chance was originated from a previous experience
of Marco Rossi-Doria: he was the first official street teacher in Naples (he had a Ministry’s

9 Glissant E. (1990), Poetique de la relation, Flammarion

Hall S. (1986), On postmodernism and articulation, Journal of Communication Inquiry

7
mandate) and he invented the Chance project; thus, Chance inherited the name from his
experiment. Further, as I’ll describe, street experience was a so strong imprinting in its early years,
for teachers and educators, that they named so, and still name, their profession. I think that they
want to underline the definitive difference between Chance and the “normal10 or first occasion”
school; and may be we are proud of. The two experiences are mutually linked and different at the
same time, but the early experience is still a “trade mark”.
The professional imprinting
Street teachers wandered through the streets, trying to intercept young
school drop-outs. They offered them, and their families, a meaningful
relationship before bringing them back into school. Chance started without pupils; we had only a
list of young school dodgers by City “Social Services”.
This activity was a continuous outreaching: for the first time an Institution went to its users, for
explaining a project, for listening to people; it knew an unknown world.
We went into their homes; we met them while working, even if it was a non-regular job; we spent
leisure together; we celebrate holidays with them; we celebrate birthdays and funerals.
It was a world where interaction face-to-face was the prevalent interaction11, where sociability12
became a public good and not a private affair.
In these activity many personal ties were born and became, time after time, stronger. We must learn
how we can translate this closeness into proximity. In fact, if the closeness can become a dangerous
intimacy and may be a power bond, proximity implies a professional tact, tools – and not only
empathy - for empowering people. If the goal is a full freedom, constrains are important for it. The
character13 is built through the constrains.
We had to learn new communicative skills. We are discovering that social conversation is the first
step of agency.14 In our frames, agency was an individual resource. In the socio-cultural perspective,
agency – that’s ours – is a social product and the communication is the main tool; in this frame
communication is not a simply change of information, but discovering and building world.
We are convinced that capability approach starts from here.
For the “normal” school, the basic problem was, and still is, to build a real credibility of Institution.
We test a reciprocal un-recognition between citizens and politics’ authorities.
There is a gap that cannot be filled between the two cities, the poor and the rich (we know we use
these words as schematic form). The credibility isn’t possible without a real proximity; proximity is
real only if it’s a value in itself.
We had not a proximity frame when we began our work; we had a motion to do so, almost a policy
instinct to found our work on an activity larger than professional skills: the new school began out of
the school, in the social community. Our work was a political work, more and more involved in the
everyday life of the youth and families. The problem wasn’t only the bring drop-outs into the school
system again; we understood that it was useless without tackling other problems. We needed care
the whole person.
Chance began with important de-institutionalization process. We were obliged to abandon every
structure of old school: time, spaces to build a de-stigmatized relationship; we have ever thought
Forman’s One flew over the cuckoo's nest as a good example for our experience.

10 We use “normal” as T. Kuhn use it about “normal sciente” paradigm.

11 Goffman E. (1967), Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior, Anchor Books (but
all Goffman works are important tools)
12 Simmel G., Die geselleigkeit
13 Sennet R. (1998), The Corrosion of Character, Norton
14 Duranti A. (1997), Linguistic Anthropology, Cambridge University Press.
Duranti A. (2001), Key term in language and culture, Malden-Oxford
Ahearn L. M. (2001), Agency, in Duranti 2001

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Chance to whom? What “target”? How does it couple them? Is it a good practice for
developing capabilities?
Chance is active since 1997 through 2008 (now it’s changing). At its beginning Chance took care of
thirteen youth to make they complete compulsory school; now it’s involved with young people until
eighteen. Now it’s perhaps definitively changing, because it’s expanding as a regular school again.
It’s public financed (township and regional funds based on National Welfare Bills funds targeted
on children’s rights). But funds are never enough, so we have invented a private funding for some
individual life project for youth: work; assisted emigration, individual projects…
Chance is a new type of “second chance school” for drop-out adolescents in Naples, Italy.
But we have to define what we mean with “second” and with “chance”. Second doesn’t mean that it
a replay of the first occasion; it means that we have to offer a different kind of school for different
culture, different knowledge, different mind. Defining “occasion” is more difficult, because in our
western culture this frame refers to an individual resource, a talent, that each person has to exploit
occasion; in this frame the people are responsible to use or not their choice resources, and it is
blamed if they don’t use them. But our students are defective in this primary capability. Therefore,
this primary capability is our primary field.
Chance addresses
 young people who have dropped out of compulsory school program. The school abandon
percentage is growing.
The compulsory school, but the school tout-court, is not equipped for deep apathy,
continuous acting out of students. It is an environment that can’t cure the “learned
incompetence”. Chance reverts the relation between knowledge and learner; in our
pedagogy, knowledge is not something to transfer, but something to build from the
meaningful experience of the people. It is a constructivist approach. But, above all, without
an ecological environment, no learning bis possible.
 young people left by themselves without guidance or parental care or support.
Nobody can become adult alone. So, we know that we must build a good environment for
growing, where young people can build significant ties with peer and a good relationship
with significant adult. In their life it’s difficult because they live in violent environment. But
that said, we think that an important goal is to form young people to dispute, respecting
differences and rules.
 young people who lack rules of behaviour and have poor emotional control.
As WHO says, emotional and life skills are the most widespread incompetence among
young people, and one the most necessary educational fields.
Chance covers these fields. If people don’t learn to stop their acting-outs, no capability can
be born. We don’t try to reach this goal by sermons or ideological talking; it’s a question to
have a sufficiently good environment where spaces and time are fit for the purpose: when a
crisis happens we have spaces where adolescents can cool their emotions; they can talk with
adults who don’t judge them but listen to. The most important tool is the “circle time”: it’s a
weekly appointment, where adolescents discuss and decide what’s the right thing to do. It’s
a way to learn democracy by doing it.
 young people without self-esteem or interest in building up a system of formal knowledge.
Instead of measuring only formal knowledge, we try to discover their tacit knowledge 15. To

15 Polanyj M. (1967), The Tacit Dimension, Peter Smith Publisher Inc. (1983)
Knowles M. S. (1990), The Adult Learner: a neglected species, Houston, Gulf Publishing
Bjornavold J. (2000), Making learning visible. Identification, Assessment and Recognition of
Non-Formal Learning in Europe, Cedefop

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 recognize informal knowledge is the first step to approach formal knowledge; but only if
this deal is reached through meaningful activities. We reverse the traditional direction from
theory toward practice, the tendency to consider knowing as an
abstract activity and we valorise manual activities as intellectual
activities, where word and reflection are indispensable. Our pedagogy is based on
Vygotskj’s16 perspective of the zone of proximal development and on the importance of
scaffolding17.
All these points reveal the importance of tutoring. For every man, and – hence - for disadvantaged
especially, accompaniment is an emancipation tool; as Marta Nussbaum – but R. Sennet too -
claims, between a lonely autonomy and a passive dependence, there is a third way: a subtle and
evolutionary interdependence. This accompaniment is an universal right and a frontier of justice.

Chance main features

Each school module (S. Giovanni/Barra, Quartieri Spagnoli, Soccavo) receives 30 adolescents for a
total amount of 90. They constitue groups of 15 students.
The ratio students over teacher is 5 to 1
 It is a team work project
 It pursues the aim of reintegrating young people into society through meaningful social
experiences and a positive educative relationship with adults (not places for social inclusion,
places for building up social boundaries, through talking/listening attitude)
 It is a project of empowerment, because enables the adolescent to recognize his/her own
resources and skills (opening “passages” in children’s cognitive system through situations
they are not used to deal with)
 It makes all professionals involved accountable about their responsibility
 It takes care of students’ families giving them assistance and enhancing parenting
 It uses the pedagogical strategy of making children, parents and professionals aware of their
experiences and most important achievements or changes in their knowledge, skills and
behaviour
 It uses the pedagogical strategy of conflict and negotiation toward an agreement to deal with
relationship and behaviour problema

Chance students

 have free breakfast and lunch 5 days a week

 may receive professional guidance from medical care to counselling on drug abuse,
violence and sexual or other abuses, to safe sex and procreation, to help with motherhood
and fatherhood
 help build up their own school, participate and are held responsible for acts and attitudes
within the school community
 work on integrating their past formal knowledge (whatever the level may be) and/or go back
to learning basic Italian literacy and elementary English, numeracy, science, social studies,
etc.
Futher, chance student
 has a mentor-teacher that follows his/her curriculum very carefully
 has a mentor social worker/educator that helps him/her and the peer group in organizing

16 Vygotskj L., Thought and language

17 Wood D., Bruner J. S., Ross G. (1976), The role of tutoring in problem solving, Journal of
Child Psychology and Psychiatry

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 most of the creative activities
 has access, within the first year, to the 8th grade exam of “licenza di scuola media di primo
grado”, that was formal end of Italian compulsory educational program
 has all life skills and competences acquired out of school acknowledged by ‘Chance’ and
presented within personal portfolio/catalogue of competences
 receives guidance for further schooling and/or vocational studies and on job training for the
following three years and access to all formal tests and qualifications required by his/her
personal study/training plan
 has the right to a small allowance (5 € per week on condition of active and positive presence
+ a bonus at the achievement of final exam and vocational studies qualifications)
 attends regular sports,
 has access to regular peer group discussions and group and/or individual counselling,
 has access to many different possible creative activities chosen from such as arts (painting,
sculpture, printing, photo, video, etc.), performing arts (film- video, theatre, dance), music
 goes on outings and camps within Naples, in other cities, in natural environments.

Chance professional
Chance is a ”Community of practice” of “reflective practitioners”
He works as a part of an integrated team of professional adults made up of
Teachers: they come from all kinds of school, primary and secondary level, because young need a
set of teaching and training skills to re-start his learning.
Social workers and educators: because the relationship starts in the street and continues – after
school time – into the other activities and in streets again, because they have loose-coupling ties and
this ties cannot be before planned.
Artisans: because their laboratories are the first step to get into work culture and skills; artisan must
have a pedagogical skills and attitude.
Experts in guidance: because they know the labour market possibility, but, above all, they can guide
young to discover himself and to meet a job as free choice and not only to survive. In Italian we
have more word for this concept, that we can translate with “orienting” or using “counselling”. E
use orienting according to its etymology, “orior”, that means “to be born”, “birth”. In fact, we
refuse the dominant idea about guidance: for us its goal is not to overcome mismatching, adapting
young people desires with labour market. In our perspective the counselling must help the birth of
young people’s goals.
Artists: because they offer the possibility to discover “right hemisphere brain” and so a fuller
person; in art laboratories, further, young can calm their strong emotions and can elaborate them.
Psychologists: because the adult’s work is very hard; the impact with so violent young emotions
must be accepted to be elaborated. Sometimes they intervene with young counselling.
Administrators: because Chance budget is very complex; it is an important constrain, but we need
to invent new “logic” for it, more adequate for “just in time” and creative solutions.
Pedagogical co-ordinators: because our work is based on multi-professional talking, each of them
with its skill, its mind, its cognitive capital; co-ordinating is not a command-control implementing
system; but it consists helping to build a higher level for sharing tools and deals young focused.
University professors and scientific supervisors: because our CoP needs up to grade its skill, to be
helped to understand more and more its field; because it must verify its work, know and meet
other good practices.
In fact, our CoP18 attends regular meetings to plan, to verify good practices, to reflect on case
studies and on policy building, on budgets. Above all CoP has to reflect, and to learn, on
18 Wenger E. (1998), Communities of practice. Learning, meaning, and identità, Cambridge University
Press

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emergencies.
Reflective practitionner Knows that narration is one of the most important tool to produce
sensemaking and to learn on itself. So he produces written work and collects all materials,
participates in scientific and on the job training seminars, has regular meetings based on written
observations of work in progress.

OBJECTIVES ACTIONS PROFESSIONALS

·Regular team meetings ·teachers

Support to the educative ·Group discussions about written ·social workers and educators
function observations of work in progress ·experts in guidance
·Psychological and pedagogical supervision ·pedagogical coordinators
·university professors, scientific supervisors

·Scientific and on the job training seminars ·teachers

Professional training ·Training on best practices ·social workers and educators
·Case studies ·experts in guidance
·pedagogical coordinators
·university professors, scientific supervisors

Project management ·Regular planning meetings ·teachers

·Meetings on policy building, on budgets ·social workers and educators
·administrators
·artisans
·company professionals

Chance numbers

Young people are not numbers: they are people, single growing human beings,
 Nevertheless numbers show how we are doing, our strong points and our weaknesses
 Over the past 10 years we have had about 1400 lengthy interviews with 14 year old boys
and girls who had dropped out from the three areas of the city of Naples, and their families:
 876 fourteen year olds have entered the project
 783 passed the compulsory media school exam in one year
 581 have continued vocational studies and job training for at least one more year
 but well less than half of these are continuing with a vocational program towards a
qualification spendible on the legal UE labour market
 6 have gone to regular high school
 29 only have finished a three-year regular course for formal professional training
 31 teenage girls have given birth to at least one child
 almost 350 are working in the black economy usualy in poorly qualified and low income
positions (bars, restaurants, mechanics, shops, masons, hair dressers, babysitters, etc)
 about 25 have relocated to northern areas for better payed and/or regular work
 18 have gone to jail
 2 have been severely injured in camorra and gang wars
 1 has been killed.
Chance professionals have also monitored at least 250 boys and girls who are not Chance former
students but are following special vocational programs for weak and at-risk learners.
Chance professionals maintain counselling relationships, both formally or unformally with almost
20% of former Chance students.

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At least but not last
Martha Nussbaum’s analysis is very useful, since it helped us to overcome the stereotypes of
multicultural relativism and helped to build an universal perspective about individual rights.
We use her basic capabilities list19 to check our project and to verify if we can define it as a
capability approach policy.

Making use Martha Nussbaum’s list of central human functional capabilities to check if
Street teachers project is a good CA practice
list
Life. Being able to live to the end of a
human life of normal length; not dying
prematurely, or before one’s life is so
reduced as to be not worth living.
Bodily Health. Being able to have good
health, including reproductive health; to be
adequately nourished; to have adequate
shelter.
Bodily Integrity. Being able to move
freely from place to place; having one’s
bodily boundaries treated as sovereign, i.e.
being able to be secure against assault,
including sexual assault, child sexual abuse,
and domestic violence; having opportunities
for sexual satisfaction and for choice in
matters of reproduction.
Senses, Imagination and
Thought.
Being able to imagine, think, and reason –
and to do these things in a “truly human”
way informed and cultivated by an adequate
education, including, but by no means
limited to, literacy and basic mathematical
and scientific training. Being able to use
imagination and thought in connection with
experiencing and producing self-expressive
works and events of one’s own choice,
religious, literary, musical, and so forth.
Being able to use one’s mind in ways
protected by guarantees of freedom of
expression with respect to both political and
artistic speech, and freedom of religious
exercise. Being able to search for the
ultimate. to have pleasurable experiences,
and to avoid non-necessary pain.
strength weakness
We try to educate to consider other Their culture is still stronger
way of life;; we try to educate than ours.
conflicts and their resolution. We take
care of their psychological well-being
fighting apathy and acting outs. We
try to educate capacity to aspire
We provide medical assistance; we Drugs and violent way of life
fight drugs. We educate for a are embedded.
conscious use of medicine and, above
all, to check themselves their health.
We accompany them to visit other We cannot offer many
countries, to meet different people. opportunities to emigrate,
We protect women and child, offering because sometimes it ‘s the
them shelter when it’s last chance. only solution.
We think and do so. We have still “school mind-
So we have argued – I hope – leaving frames” that sometimes
from real life and meaningful reverse us into the old
experience of youth, respecting their educational model.
differences is our goal and our Institutions are not ready yet
pedagogical structuring. Learning to change and to invest
concerns all the parts of the life, and resources toward this
our project aspires to guarantee it. direction.
It’s necessary to begin cultural
enterprise to ink policies and
justice questions.

Emotions. Being able to have attachments
to things and people outside ourselves; to
love those who love and care for us, to
grieve at their absence; in general, to love, to
grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and
Our community is an emotional
environment, where also un-verbal
emotions have their space, and where
we educate to recognize them, to
transform slowly them into words.
External continuously hurts
children; their compulsive and
aggressive world bis still
dominant.

19 I obtained the following list by Jonathan Warner, Rights, Capabilities and Human Flourishing, that I found surfing
in www.samford.edu/lillyhumanrights/papers/Warner_Rights.pdf

13
justified anger. Not having one’s emotional Emotions are our main educational
development blighted by overwhelming fear field.
and anxiety, or by traumatic events of abuse
or neglect. (Supporting this capability means
supporting forms of human association that
can be shown to be crucial in their
development.)

Practical Reason. Being able to form a Tutoring for a conscious plan about Sometimes our western
conception of the good and to engage in own life is one of our goal. We have, pedagogical mind has the
critical reflection about the planning of one’s in our structuring, a dedicated time upper hand over our aims, and
life. (This entails protection for the liberty of for this professional engage. we come back to think what’s
conscience.) We accompany young people to our best solution for
explore the world as a possibility. adolescent. Instead of helping
them.
Affiliation We have theory and practice in this … but we are still too far
A.Being able to live with and toward others, sense…
to recognize and show concern for other We have a strong affiliation ties… … but we cannot extend them
human beings, to engage in various forms of outside.
social interaction; to be able to imagine the
situation of another and to have compassion
for that situation: to have the capability for
both justice and friendship. (Protecting this
capability means protecting institutions that
constitute and nourish such forms of
affiliation, and also protecting the freedom
of assembly and political speech.)
B. Having the social bases of self-respect Our school and our relationship are … but beyond and later our
and non-humiliation; being able to be treated based on full respect for the whole internal space?
as a dignified being whose worth is equal to person; we have built a de-stigmatized
that of others. This entails, at a minimum, environment, that the first step for
protections against discrimination on the CA…
basis of race, sex, sexual orientation,
religion, caste, ethnicity, or national origin.
In work, being able to work as a human
being, exercising practical reason and
entering into meaningful relationships of
mutual recognition with other workers.
Other species. Being able to live with No experiences.
concern for and in relation to animals,
plants, and the world of nature
Control over One’s Environment. We learn by doing democracy. These are only sporadic
A. Political. Being able to participate We educate adolescents to control the occasions.
effectively in political choices that govern future of the project and sometimes
one’s life; having the right of political we organize public demonstration to
participation, protections of free speech and defend it.
association.
B. Material. Being able to hold property
(both land and movable goods), not just
formally but in terms of real opportunity;
and having property rights on an equal basis
with others; having the right to seek
employment on an equal basis with others;
having the freedom from unwarranted search
and seizure.

This our first self-evaluation.

14
Salvatore Pirozzi

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