A «pedagogical arsenal». The narratives of Janusz Korczak as an educational, intergenerational, political project

Abstract

The article reflects on the narrative projects initiated by Janusz Korczak as a pedagogical and idiographic meeting space between the world of childhood and the world of adulthood and as a means for self-education, for the education of others and for social and civil recognition of the individual in the community. The Polish educator was, in fact, so convinced of the need for an adult to listen to the voice of children in order to trace the voice of his own having been a child, so as to then truly bring social and civil needs into the world of childhood and impress a political change, that he weaves and combines each of his activities with narrative practice, with the word. In the stories, in the children's novels, in the radio conversations and in the various activities organized within the orphanage there is in fact a game of projections, exchanges and educational identifications that opens up the possibility to the intergenerational dialogue and, therefore, according to Korczak, to a true process of affirmation and respect for children's rights.