ABSTRACT
The Chance Project is an initiative whose main purpose is the educational and social re-integration of a group of teenage drop-outs, aged between 14 and 16. It aims to enable these adolescents to obtain a school diploma by combining academic education, focused on the achievement of literacy, with the learning of social and practical skills. The range of activities is designed to re-instil a fundamental motivation to learn through an educational programme that is wide-ranging and personally meaningful, and through opportunities for developing cooperative skills. The Project offers a favourable student–teacher ratio: 18 teachers, together with youth tutors and other specialists. A central role is also performed by the “social mothers”. Shirley Hoxter’s paper “The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe” explored the explosive effect that deprived young people’s needs and mental states can have on teachers and school structure. Observations from a psychoanalytic standpoint can, indeed, transform “observed facts into meaningful thoughts capable of producing growth in meaning”.
