Schooling with nature, between past and present

The relationship between education and nature – or more generally the outdoors – is quite a long and even heterogeneous one which has gone through pedagogy and education history for a long time. It is a relationship that has been discussed, problematized and experienced by many authors: some illustrious examples, in their diversity, are Rousseau, Fröbel, Baden Powell, Dewey, Latter, Montessori, Pizzigoni, Malaguzzi, Lodi, Ciari, Frabboni, Zavalloni (Guerra, 2015). This list, although arbitrary, immediately confirms a fundamental aspect from our point of view: the relationship between education and nature is not a “new story”, even though today it is being renewed through increased research, reflections and proposals that find more and more space on the national educational scene (Schenetti, Salvaterra & Rossini, 2015; Birbes, 2016; Antonietti & Bertolino, 2017, Iavarone, et al., 2017; Dozza & Cagol, 2018; Farnè, Bertolotti & Terrusi, 2018; Mortari & Silva, 2019; Bortolotti, 2019; Valentini & Donatiello, 2019), but also the international one (Humberstone & Henderson, 2016). In this sense, investigating historical and foundational experiences appears to be interesting in order to better analyse, understand and promote more recent experiences. This contribution aims to offer an analysis of structures, moments and practices of the last century’s first open air schools – with particular reference to the Waldschule of Charlottenburg in 1904 – highlighting their origins, reasons and peculiarities. It is from this starting point that some possible connections with contemporary proposals can be analysed, tracing elements of continuity and discontinuity in order to better investigate the recent phenomenon, to primarily grasp the peculiarities and therefore to problematize forms and methods of action and development.