L'educacio' en paisatge des de l'optica del Conveni europeu del paisatge i noves perspectives

The European Landscape Convention, as it is known, highlights the important role people have within the landscape (by being the holder of both rights and responsibilities) and proposes awareness-raising, education and training as the first specific measures the signatory Countries should implement. This very important novelty, namely acting on people first, then acting on landscape, needs to be explored and understood in its deep significances, to avoid the risk of letting it remain just an interesting statement of principles without concrete implementation. The frame of the Convention is very important to understand the complex and rich sense of education on landscape and it opens interesting perspectives on to it. In reviewing journals, books, papers, internet sources and so on, it appears that education on landscape is not completely new. The educational value of landscape has been many time recognized, with increasing attention, together with a general environmentalism and heritage culture growing. The educational value of landscape has been recognized over and over again, with increasing attention, together with the growing of a general environmentalism and heritage culture interest. Anyway, educational approaches and experiences, more or less related to landscape, present a variety as wide as the landscape concept is generally considered and related to different epistemologies. These experiences can be collected in different groups, according to their main issues. All these issues will be further acknowledged as important points in education on landscape, even if, when considering individually, they probably could not be defined as “education on landscape” tout-court. Each of them might well give us a part of the wider and more complex perspective. For example, we find the experiences based on outdoor educational activities, in which the relationship with the physical context is considered as very important; what lacks is attention to the features of the environment, features that would make us perceive it as “landscape”. Other activities, focused on the school play ground, foster an active involvement of children in becoming responsible towards “their own” landscape. Activities mainly centered on the natural environment are in other cases proposed, or activities mainly focused on landscape in art: both these approaches run the risk of proposing a limited idea of landscape. Finally, landscape education as geographical knowledge of different types of regions on the Earth is very often proposed in school programs at different levels; if it remains the only approach to landscape, the risk is to see it as something faraway, not connected with everyday life places and experiences. When looking at the perspectives proposed by the European Landscape Convention, we discover a wider and deeper significance for education on landscape, going beyond, to certain extent, the approaches presented above. First, if landscape is “an area as it is perceived”, the whole field of perceptions and emotions arises as fundamental in approaching a landscape; on the other hand, if its “character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors”, a logic and scientific approach is also necessary to understand these factors and their action and interactions. It means that educational activities will deal both with the feelings and senses sphere and with the rational sphere, valuing their complementariness. The approach of the Convention requires a very personal involvement of children, as they are part of the population that perceive the landscape in every area. Moreover, the Convention definition gives relevance to the complex systemic structure of the landscape: when dealing with it, both analysis and synthesis abilities are certainly involved: from a pedagogic point of view these are fundamental steps. Another relevant suggestion comes from art. 2, which states that landscape is recognized everywhere; dealing with landscape in educational activities means, in this sense, to give importance to every piece of land, starting from the one children deal with everyday. From a methodological point of view it seems that the most important thing to do in education would not be giving children information on each landscape (that will not probably even be feasible), but to help them learning a way to approach each landscape, or “learning to read” landscape; in proactive perspective, the educational question is not to pay attention only to beautiful landscape (the ones that need nothing, just to admire them), but, on the contrary, to care for each landscape, learning to recognize both its values and its degraded features. The time dimension of landscape arises both explicitly and implicitly through the whole text of the Convention. This concept is very important for children; they should learn to understand that change happens and happened in the past and thus understand the different relationship between humans and the environment in the past and in the present. Furthermore, the Convention goes towards better qualities of landscape, consistently with the “aspiration of the public”. Learning to face the future and to be able to express wishes and aspiration represents a very significant step in an educational route. The “social dimension” proposed by the Convention has to be remarked, too. It means that educational activities will focus not only on a personal approach to landscape, but they will probably be implemented mostly with group activities, underlying the importance of comparing different perceptions and points of view, learning to accept the diversities, and improving the ability of discussion: landscape can function as a “cultural mediator”. Finally, the approach of the Convention is essentially open towards a direct engagement of people in landscape matters, with responsibilities that involve not only politicians and technicians, but all the citizens with a participative approach. These remarks underline the fact that a multiple value characterizes landscape education: to educate “at” landscape, knowing it, to educate “for” landscape, acquiring responsibilities towards it, but also to educate “through” the landscape, using it as a sort of tool in a general growing process of both the individual and the community. The main issue of education on landscape concerns the achievement of the ability of reading landscape; it does not require technical competences or instruments, just “trained eyes”, and, in this sense, is available for everybody. Landscape does not “talk” directly; only if we know its “language” we can see deep inside it, we can interpret its complexity and understand it. The ability of reading landscape in such terms can be considered as a sort of “landscape literacy” that “permits the reader to see what is not immediate” (Spirn, 2005: page 400). A re-appropriation of one’s own sense of place and place belonging is encouraged through landscape literacy, too, making people more conscious and developing a more positive relation with places and other people. In this sense education on landscape is an important aspect of the education of tomorrow citizens towards sustainable development questions: learning to see is required for learning to act (Turri, 1998). Due to its characteristics, education on landscape can be considered as a way for developing education on sustainable development, a particularly important issue in the present years (2005-2014), as this decade has been called by the UN the Decade for Education on Sustainable Development. The report “Education on Landscape for children” gathers all these suggestions and tries to present them in an operational way, in order to further the concrete implementation of projects and activities. It is mainly addressed to the world of the School, in all education levels, from kindergarten to secondary school. However, the contents of the report apply nonetheless to extra-school contexts, to various places and educational experiences that are developed in different ways and by different subjects. The report can provide useful ideas and instruments to try out educational and training activities on landscape also for adults, in the perspective of lifelong learning. Also higher education and university world can be involved, on the one hand because they educate future teachers, on the other hand because the ability of “landscape reading” (developed with the activities proposed in the report) fosters cultural growth both in scientific and humanistic studies. The report is made of two parts. In the first one we find the principles that are embodied in the European Landscape Convention and that are the basic reference points for Education on Landscape; these principles are then put in relationship with the essential requirements and the main aims of the Education on Sustainable Development. Afterwards, the pedagogic path towards the setting up of an active citizenship is explained. The second part consists of requirements, specific aims and instruments of education on landscape. The necessary steps to achieve the ability of “landscape reading” are firstly specified. A general pattern for landscape reading is proposed, adaptable each time depending on the characteristics of the group of children involved and to the specific educational aims. It comes as an exercise to be carried out through subsequent steps: recognizing different landscape elements and their relationships that characterize each landscape uniqueness; recognizing the power of landscape to give sensations and excite emotions in oneself and in other people; looking for an explanation of landscape features, in connection with natural and human factors; understanding landscape change, and ‘telling its story’; imagining and planning future landscape change. The following chapter presents all the different “landscapes” that can be considered in educational activities: in order to implement these activities, a wide range of tools and methodologies can be used, and a wide range of aspects and issues can be focalized. Each time the choice of which instruments and what specific focus to prefer in the activity depends mainly on the age of the children to which the educational project is directed, and will be done considering the general aims of the wider educational project in which the activities are inserted. The last chapter of the report contains some indications concerning the different roles of people involved in educational projects on landscape, aiming to rise attention on teachers’ and mentors’ education and training, on the importance of actively involving children, on the importance of building a network of partnership. In the report some examples of activities and projects are also presented: they can really be considered as “best practices”, good examples to take inspiration from, concerning both the methodology adopted and the partners involved. Moreover, these examples convey some messages on education on landscape: cooperation, coordination, support and mediation are very important ingredients; no very special or complicated tools need to be used; it is a feasible challenge and it can be fascinating!