The challenging of teaching the value of Classics today: The «Children at the University» Project. Paths toward the future and pedagogical matters

Undoubtedly ours is a high tech- and pragmatically-oriented society where little space is reserved for learning and appropriating subject matters that privilege the spirit and prompt a deep understanding of human beings as individual and as a part of the whole we call «human community». Literature and art, humanities, more in general, struggle to claim their space: there is not a profitable outcome in devoting one�s own time to them. For college students and adults it is enough to have a little grasp of humanities. The beauty and joy of learning for one�s own enrichment and for the profit of the community are almost lost. Imagination �one of the most precious faculties that human beings have� is almost passively stimulated in the younger by letting them just play on pre-built and pre-determined paths of computer games, or watch popular fiction series, such as «Hercules» (TV animated Series), «Harry Potter» and «Percy Jackson» series, embellished and, sometimes, trivialized by �special effects�. The present paper analyzes some pedagogical strategies, and related results, of an experimental, transformative project which has been conducted with children of Elementary School with the purpose both of re-directing them to the roots of our modern �games� and �imagination�, and, of demonstrating the potentialities that a classicsbased education can offer in terms of teaching good values, wisdom, beauty, and so forth. Classical mythology, adapted to the children�s age, has been the ground of the entire project. Self-cultural awareness and creativity, lexicon improvement, reflective and comparative skills acquisition, joy of learning and of actively playing with the learned subjects have been the most transformative effects of this project on the children