REGGIO EMILIA, Italy: The Princess of Wales’ visit to Italy has put the spotlight on an Italian early childhood educational model that helped revolutionize how toddlers learn in school.
The Reggio Approach, used in public daycare centers and preschools in the northern city of Reggio Emilia, values a child’s inherent curiosity and potential, with teachers acting as facilitators, not instructors, and parents and the surrounding community actively involved. And Princess Catherine, who has made early development her signature cause, is spending two days seeing it up close.
“I love that you put children and childhood at the heart of the community, and I’m really fascinated to learn more about it,” she said as she arrived at one of the town’s preschools on Wednesday.
Reggio partially grew out of the Montessori philosophy and both Italian approaches have spread around the world, standing as counterpoints to models in places like the US and Britain that emphasize standardization and testing for children so young they haven’t begun to read.
Reggio appeals to some Italian parents who themselves received education with rote learning — but only to a point, according to Kathryn Ramsay, a longtime early-childhood educator who runs a Reggio-inspired project north of Rome.
