2025/01/23 by Lo Monte, Tommaso, Kochanowicz, Jerzy
#Lorenzo Milani #critical pedagogy #emancipatory pedagogy #oppression #social discrimination
paper · doi:10.34813/37coll2024
The purpose of the article is to outline the social thought and educational work of the Italian teacher and educator Don Lorenzo Milani (1923–1967). His ideas and activities anticipated the trends of the emancipatory and critical pedagogy of Freire and Bourdieu. The authors of the article use the historical method, analysing the writings of Milani, whose critical edition was published in 2017. Previous researchers have not had the opportunity to know the entire production of this pedagogue and priest known in Italy and to reconstruct his ideas in their historical and biographical context. The authors established that Milani, before and independently of Paolo Freire, perceived the division of society into oppressors and oppressed. The liberation of the latter had to take place through education, awakening their subjectivity and awareness of their social situation. The tool for this was to provide them with access to speech (learning to read, write, and discuss), thanks to which they would have the opportunity to critically reflect on the surrounding reality. The article presents Milani’s biography, thus exposing his social analysis and his innovative edu- cational activities undertaken at the schools he founded: in Calenzano and Barbiana. In particular, Barbiana was a full-time school, open 365 days a year, designed to bridge the cultural gap between its poor students and the children of the rich. In Barbiana students read the newspaper together, met spe- cialists in various fields of knowledge, and dedicated themselves to the collective writing of texts. Milani spent all his time with his pupils, reading, studying, and discussing with them. Milani’s emancipatory ideas and actions were not a remedy for Italy's inequalities at the time, and they cannot be so in the contemporary globalised world, where social ties are fragmenting and economic differences are increasing. However, it is worth mentioning the figure of the Italian educator as an example of a commitment to disadvantaged social groups. Today these include employees exploited by their employers, groups marginalised from social life due to age, race, gender, and political beliefs, powerless people, who live in a culture of silence, and finally, people who are subjected to cultural imperialism. If, thanks to education, today’s oppressed learn – as Lorenzo Milani wanted – critical and creative thinking, effective communication, and satisfying relationships, their destiny and level of participation in social life will improve.