Education in hospitals

Children and adolescents have the right to social, spiritual, and moral well-being, as well as to physical and mental health, as stated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 and reflected in the many representations of childhood held by adults who, as such, feel responsible for the care and education of children. However, children can become ill, sometimes seriously, and experience hospitalization, which has always been a source of concern and fear both for those who live through it and for their families. This happens because hospitalization often abruptly and brutally disrupts everyday normality, calling habits and certainties into question, altering rhythms, plans, and relationships, introducing new rules and new figures into the lives of children entering the healthcare context, and opening the door to sometimes distressing scenarios when diagnoses are severe or even terminal.

As early as the 1950s, in Italy, some pediatric wards began experimentally establishing special school sections aimed at providing educational support to sick children, especially those hospitalized for long periods, and at preventing the emotional and psychological distress caused both by illness itself and by the hospitalization experience. In fact, following the recognition of feelings of abandonment, anguish, and physical and psychological suffering among children hospitalized for prolonged periods and deprived of the continuous presence and closeness of their families, the process of humanizing pediatric care settings began. This growing awareness made it possible, in the following decades, both for parents to remain permanently beside their hospitalized children — not only during visiting hours, but throughout the day — and for playful and educational interventions to be introduced alongside medical and therapeutic care.

Pediatric wards progressively changed their nature, becoming increasingly specialized in the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses while simultaneously creating hospital spaces capable of making illness an experience of life rather than one of social, emotional, and cognitive isolation. The process of care thus became an experience able to integrate medical and healthcare goals with educational, social, relational, and developmental ones. Gradually, also encouraged by the European Charter for Children in Hospital adopted by the European Parliament on May 13, 1986, the idea became firmly established that play and education — as essential elements for children’s healthy growth and development — are equally indispensable within pediatric settings.

Since then, in Italy, thanks to Circular No. 345 of 1986 issued by the Ministry of Public Education, the opening of school sections within hospitals has been strongly supported and promoted, encouraging the temporary assignment of motivated and professionally trained teachers from local schools in order to foster learning and personal growth among hospitalized children. This work has been carried out particularly through collaboration with parents, healthcare professionals, and the students’ schools of origin. Today, hospital schooling is an educational reality spread throughout the entire country, whose functioning requires structured cooperation with social, healthcare, and educational services, including initiatives aimed at strengthening teacher training in specialized subjects and in specific home-schooling projects.

Thanks to flexible and innovative teaching methodologies and individualized educational strategies, teachers at every school level offer sick children and adolescents opportunities for growth, play, and learning. They help them build paths of knowledge, but also paths toward greater awareness of themselves and of their own bodies, enabling them to express their communicative, expressive, and cognitive potential even during illness, so that they may better understand and cope with their condition.