CRITICAL PEDAGOGY FROM A SOUTHERNEUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE

1
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY FROM A SOUTHERN-EUROPEAN
PERSPECTIVE

• Lorenzo Milani and the School of Barbiana
• Johannes Gutenberg
• Universität Mainz
• June 2007

2
Context

• ITALY Post-war
• Church site of contestation
• Build up towards Vatican Council II
• Social field a site of contestation
• Church-Communist Party

3
Lorenzo Milani Comparetti (1923-1967)

• Jewish parents
• Agnostic
• High status society
• Upper Bourgeoisie
• Prestigious academic
  figures in family
• Episodes which made him aware of bourgeois
  privilege

4
LIFE CHOICES

• Did away with family tradition
• Took up art instead of university studies
• Took up holy orders against family wishes
• Mother kept regretting this
• Went against the grain
• Outspoken and a hell-raiser

5
LEADERSHIP AND POVERTY

• Sent to San Donato di Calenzano near Florence
• Faced with poverty and illiteracy
• Helped in the running of a scuola serale (evening
  school) in the doposcuola program
• Provided him with insights concerning education,
  leadership and power
• Derived his inspiration from the Gospels option
  for the poor
• Felt that people required a broad humanistic
  education and not simply religious instruction

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OPTION FOR THE POOR

• Farmers and textile workers
• Working and peasant classes
• Capitalist exploitation
• Education and power
• Different levels of education
• Felt that Communist Party and Church invested
  more in dances to increase membership than in
  education.

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RADICAL VIEWS

• Friday talk/conference
• Did not shy away from criticizing those he
  invited
• Social issues discussed
• Themes included socialism
• Confronted landowners
• Too much for certain community and clergy members
  - sent into exile at remote village

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SantAndrea a Barbiana

• Village or settlement near Vicchio in Mugello
  region Tuscany
• Lacked basic services and infrastructure
• Children were drop outs (read pushed out) of
  the school system
• signs of the oppressed classes
• Set up school, mainly for boys

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THE SCHOOL

• Austere approach we must run while others
  walk, as Julius Nyerere would say.
• Approx. 56 hrs a week
• Made up for the cultural capital factor
• Students were both teachers and students
• Older students taught younger ones
• books, materials
• Educational issues related to life, including
  political life
• Did not progress to next stage until every one
  learnt

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SCHOOL (CONT.)

• Collective learning
• No failures
• Caring I care school motto
• Languages from records
• Students sent to work and live abroad to learn
  languages and other experiences
• Combined learning with community work
• Pupils read papers together, discussed issues and
  wrote responses

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Letter to a teacher

• Experiences captured in classic textLettera a
  Una Professoressa (Letter to a teacher)
• Tone of book anger
• Anger at Bourgeois politics and class biased
  education- world of the Pierinos and the Giannis
• Also in collection of letters
• In responses to military chaplains and judges re
  the accusation of Objection of conscience
  (against military conscription)

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LETTER TO A TEACHER

• Tackled broad social issues such as
• Gender/racial/class discrimination,
• unfairness of consumption tax(on basic
  necessities),
• privileged life of salaried teachers/right to
  strike
• private tuition
• Forcing out students after making them repeat
  several times against constitution
• Who pays taxes to support public education that
  fails working and peasant class students?
• Irrelevant curricula

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LEADERSHIP

• Education, power, class and leadership
• Leadership roles according to class
• Rigour, prolonged period of study to make up for
  lack of cultural capital
• Education re life - relevant and just curriculum
• Learning writing style
• Sharing what one learns
• Collective learning, decision making, leadership

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LEADERSHIP

• Reclaiming the word La parola ai poveri
• Less time wasting activities and more study,
  community work making up lost ground
• Investigating together object of knowledge
• Learning re reading the world newspaper debates
  Critical Literacy
• Education, languages, work
• Gaining a cosmopolitan dimension (experiences
  abroad)

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LEADERSHIP

• Obedience not always a virtue
• Object to following false leadership
• Ignoring call for unjust wars (Letter to judges,
  military chaplains)
• Against military conscription
• A number of Barbiana students became trade
  unionists, teachers.