Education and language skills: the decade of awareness

Visalberghi decisively contributed to the development of pedagogical studies in Italy. Already in the Sixties, his works opened a view on some educational aspects still debated today. One was the relation between socio-economic status and education: he strongly supported the idea that personal abilities were not linked to the family's status tout court, but to the learning opportunities that families could provide to their children. Language skills in particular, developed through parents-children exchange, were the key to school achievement.