Socializzare outdoor: se non ora quando? Come i bambini affronteranno i nuovi bisogni di socialità e di distanziamento sociale ora e nel futuro post-Covid

In Italy as in other EU countries, one of the social categories most affected by the COVID-19 health emergency are children. Faced with such an urgent challenge, once again, there is a lack of tools and skills to deal with the emergencies affecting our society (Salomone, 2013) and children do not find space on the political agenda. There seems to be no awareness for the impoverishment of educational and development opportunities that this forced enclosure has caused in this category (Savethechildren, 2020). However, to grow up children need experiences that a large international literature (Qvortrup, 2005; Invernizzi, Williams, 2008) has documented are crucial from an early age. The contribution we are presenting reviews some of the main measures adopted in Europe to deal with the educational emergency from COVID-19. More specifically, in the contribution we propose some of the suggested “solutions” will be analysed such as the formation of “microcomunità spontanee” (Saraceno, 2020). Through a specific comparison between the Italian and Danish “situational” model - an example of the avant-garde in outdoor education - we will try to identify points of convergence or divergence. The Danish example shows itself careful to the interaction between society and the environment in its social, cultural, and political aspects in terms of sustainability. Bringing children outdoors not only recovers the concept of the environment as a place of learning but the contact with nature gives them a feeling of well-being (Warming, 2019). Starting from these elements, the sociological gaze will be aimed at the horizon of the post-pandemic which summarizes the need to elaborate a new concept of well-being and, therefore, a new concept of education that is part of a broader paradigm which is that of sustainability (Salomone, 2013). The paper aims to advance, from a forecasting point of view, some indications on the impact that experimental outdoor practices have on social relationships and on children.