Social Needs, Emergency Policies and Solidaristic Attitudes throughout the Italian Education System. Sociological Research during the Covid-19 Pandemic Outbreak

During the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic (March 2020), Italy was the only European country where all the schools, universities, as well as other formal and informal educational institutions, were completely closed down (until June 2020), with distance teaching being introduced for the first time. This introductory chapter aims to contextualize the essays by showing, firstly, what occurred in Italy during the initial Covid-19 outbreak and how the Government and Ministry of Education managed the sanitary crisis. Secondly, the state of the Italian education system before the health emergency is discussed in order to highlight how the pandemic emphasized the ordinary systemic criticalities. Thirdly, we offer several key concepts to interpret some empirical data, taken from cultural studies and the sociology of change, from the well-known notions of risk, ontological insecurity, fear and trauma, to the less used concept of suffering as a social construction, applied to education.