Walk into the grounds at San Silvestro, enter the main villa—a storybook house—step into any classroom, even the "Solidarity Center" for the most severely affected: the first thing you feel is that this is a place to live, not simply to learn. A place to bloom and flourish. How can we convey this impression to you, the reader? We want to say: go see for yourself. That's what many families have done, some traveling from great distances, even from Sicily. Some have uprooted themselves entirely, leaving their hometowns to live near Mantua, choosing this school of flourishing for their children.
They came because of a principle that runs through everything here—the founder's founding idea: a child must never be separated from family. Family is the living source of every child's emotional needs, and even more so for a child with intellectual disability. These emotional needs are the foundation, the wellspring of all development.
But this wellspring can only flow fully and positively with help—with a school that welcomes the child from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon, that listens to what the child needs, that is equipped with appropriate methods and tools, that guides and supports the family above all through the progress of their sons and daughters.
For Casa del Sole, the phrase "school of life" is no exaggeration. It functions in life and for life:
- In life: because affection comes before intellect. You see it not only in observation and in each child's individual program, but in the visible respect and tenderness between teachers and students, in the care taken to help each child grow aware of himself, in the effort to build confidence, in the value placed on relationships within the group.
- In life: because of the rich variety of concrete activities offered. Each class has abundant teaching materials, but also speech therapy, psychomotor work, physical therapy, gymnastics, handicrafts, music, theater, swimming. Every classroom has its own garden corner, its kitchen corner, hours for equine therapy and visits with animals.
- For life: working closely with families, concentrating every effort so that each child achieves independence according to his or her capacity, offering training in domestic work for girls and vocational training for boys after elementary school.
- For life—look at what happens to the children who grow up here and move into adulthood. Andrea works on his family's farm after completing military service. Gabriella is married, a mother. Giancarlo works as an operator in a cheese factory. Not all reach these milestones, it's true. But Casa del Sole has created a Solidarity and Welcome Center in Mantua for young people over sixteen who have left school and have not yet found their place in the working world.
Now back to Casa del Sole at San Silvestro and the children welcomed here from age three onward.
Classes are organized by age group, which means each class has children with different disabilities, kept small (four to six children), and highly individualized programs. The nursery classes particularly impressed us—they're designed with ample space because children this young still need room to move freely. Each classroom is divided into areas for specific activities: schoolwork, dining, movement, personal care. We visited a class of four children with two teachers. At this age, the work is intense: the youngest must learn to orient themselves, to concentrate, to organize, with the teacher's constant support.
All the teachers have been trained through the University of Brescia's specialized school for remedial education, followed by a year or two of internship at Casa del Sole itself.
The school rests on several principles:
- Competence, first of all.
- Wholeness in education: the entire personality of the child must flourish, not just one aspect or another.
- The exercise of abilities—because abilities deteriorate without use. Every child must develop and maintain, according to his or her capacity, all of his or her gifts. Early intervention produces the best results.
- Consistency in how the school and family approach the child: working for and with families has been a central concern of Casa del Sole from the beginning. When children progress, they integrate better into family life, and that family integration and love give them the stimulus and motivation to keep growing.
And finally—or truly, fundamentally—education knows no such word as impossible. There is always something to achieve, some success to reach.
This brings me to the Solidarity Center.
What is it? A small, beautiful house for children with the most severe disabilities—children who have little or no motor control, no independence, no language, and often face other challenges besides.
We don't call what happens there a school, yet we speak of activities, programs, progress. We speak mostly of love, peace, serenity. We don't simply speak of these things; they are lived there. None of these children can speak. In these carefully arranged, warmly furnished rooms, there is a subtle capacity to observe, listen, and understand what these children express in such inadequate ways—through cries, agitation, or total apathy that requires stimulation.
We saw smiles respond to affection. We saw peace preside over meals that could have been—we know this—genuine battlefields.
Some details moved us: the delicate curtains on the glass doors, a memory of the hands of Mamma Evelina Gementi; the white tablecloths, specially shaped with deep indentations to suit the difficult meals these children require. To take such care in making these cloths and changing them frequently (and believe us, it is necessary) seemed to us a mark of respect, a sign of the quality of life chosen for them, all the more so because they are the most fragile.
Here, activities have names like: welcome, body games, meals, music therapy, swimming, manipulation, hydrotherapy.
Here not only is the dignity of the children respected; their joy and serenity are safeguarded. We watched a girl eat slowly but peacefully—her educator told us that when she first arrived, she would hurt herself and could only be fed through a feeding tube. One of the two sisters who work in the Center spoke to us of her admiration for the parents of these children, so gravely affected in body and mind, who are welcomed here and require such constant care and attention.
To help the parents, the director had an idea: four Poor Clare sisters—a small contemplative community—came to live on the first floor of this house. These sisters, always in prayer, are perhaps the voice of the children, perhaps the intercession of their parents, perhaps the breath of the Spirit for their caregivers.
Finally, we want to say that we visitors too received warm, gentle, serene welcome. And if you go to see Casa del Sole—yes, please go—you'll notice all those small details that make for a quality life. You'll see, as we did, the sky-blue aprons. A small thing, you might say, but it's the uniform for everyone here, from the youngest child to the director, from the educator to the cook, from the therapist to the secretary. The director, we were told, is the first to put hers on each morning. A small thing, perhaps, but a symbol of one great family, a fraternal community.
— Sergio Sciascia, 1988
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Casa del Sole occupies a beautiful villa at San Silvestro di Curtatone near Mantua. It is a special school for children with cerebral palsy, where the best rehabilitation and teaching techniques are applied with genuine dedication—with love, I would say, if that word weren't overused.
Three of us visited for many hours on a fine late-October day. We were with the children, watched them eat, work, play, ride horses, learn, watch a spontaneous performance by the GEN who happened to be passing through. We spoke with the educators, ate lunch with them (the same meal for everyone, except for children with special diets), and explored everywhere—the bathrooms (forgive the slight disorder; they've just been used!), the classrooms, the kitchens, the pool. We can say plainly that this is the right school, in the highest sense of the term, for children with intellectual disabilities.
The real question is whether it's possible to find enough people with such vocations, such intelligence, such expertise and material resources—the very things that gave life to Casa del Sole—distributed widely enough across the territory to meet the needs of all children with intellectual disabilities.
Because knowing this school awakens, once again, all our doubts about the solutions the state has offered for educating and developing children with cerebral palsy. To place them in a regular school, where there is no specialized expertise, no proper equipment, no necessary "spirit" to develop the gifts they have, disadvantages them further on top of the limitations they already bear. It's absurd to say the school should simply acquire those competencies and equipment because they are difficult and expensive; that would be like putting cardiac surgery equipment in every medical clinic.
Let's move from the interest—indeed, the passion—this school inspires, to its legal and technical characteristics, to show that schools like this are not utopias but real possibilities within the human and social reality of our country.
Casa del Sole is a recognized legal entity chartered by the Lombardy Region, offering free public services—education, rehabilitation, diagnosis, and outpatient care—to children with cerebral palsy, for the harmonious development of their personalities, respecting their diversity as persons. Children attend from nine in the morning to four in the afternoon. They arrive and return home in school buses from various municipalities; some travel nearly sixty kilometers, relayed by a shuttle system of school buses.
Some families living far away have moved nearby so their children could attend Casa del Sole.
For roughly one hundred fifty children, the school has about sixty specialized educators and caregivers, support staff, and some conscientious objectors in civic service. All are selected by the school (conscientious objectors through a direct arrangement with the Ministry of Defense), particularly by the director and founder Vittorina Gementi, and are hired after a year of probation. The hiring process itself was one of the hardest challenges, because it goes against the standard rules of hiring by competitive examination or other public criteria, which are not suited to finding the right personnel for highly specialized work requiring specific human gifts—such as educating and rehabilitating children with intellectual disabilities. Even in this, Vittorina Gementi has managed to follow her own standards. And so we face a question that became more and more apparent as we learned more about Casa del Sole: Is such a school possible without a person like Gementi—someone capable of drawing together and concentrating human gifts, educational capacity, organizational and administrative skill, trust? And then: how many Vittorina Gementis are there?
Casa del Sole began with the donation of a villa. Other buildings have since been constructed in the park, always designed to human scale, forming a small village with its own chapel, common room, workshops, services, and play areas. Banks and private benefactors paid for the construction. Public agencies pay tuition for children classified as "schoolchildren," but until recently not for those with severe cerebral palsy. Various institutions and individuals have covered the deficit through their generosity. Today, finally, a agreement for the most severely affected children is within reach.
Throughout the park, along the village paths, inside the buildings and in individual rooms, the technical equipment, furnishings, colors, images, and decorations all reflect deep human respect, a search for the best, always within limits of utility and simplicity.
Four complementary centers operate around Casa del Sole, in the villa itself or in nearby Mantua.
- In the villa is the Solidarity Center: a day therapy center for children ages 3-12 with the most severe cerebral palsy.
- For older children (ages 12-16) with the same degree of disability, the Mantua Solidarity Center operates at viale Pompilio.
- The Solidarity Center "Family Group"—at corso Vittorio Emanuele II 52, Mantua—serves girls ages 16-20 during the day, training them for integration into family and community life.
- Girls over twenty are supported by the Welcome Center, which works toward their human development.
The school itself offers: nursery classes (ages 3-6), elementary school (ages 6-15), and vocational training courses for both boys and girls (ages 13-16) in carpentry, electrical work, plant nursery work, and other trades.
Under the heading "Socializing Experiences," the school also organizes vacation stays: weeks in the mountains, seaside stays, lakeside retreats.
— Nicole Schulthes, 1988