Multiple and composite: identities without labels. Teaching respect for atherness from early childhood

Abstract

Education should ensure that, from early childhood, children gradually acquire greater awareness of themselves, their potential, and how to express themselves while respecting each other's differences. Through processes of identification and progressive self-determination, children learn to perceive themselves, get to know themselves, and discover their own aptitudes. However, behind the apparent neutrality of educational actions and linguistic expressions, there are often limitations, stereotypes, and prejudices that are transmitted, more or less consciously, to those who are growing up. In an attempt to show how this risk can be countered, this contribution presents the experience of a childcare service engaged in a problematizing reading of the ways in which culture interprets interpersonal differences and the rigid identity models underlying it.