Social Class, Language And Power. 'letter To A Teacher': Lorenzo Milani And The School Of Barbiana
by Carmel Borg /
2013 / English / PDF
6 MB Download
This book foregrounds the ideas of an important European pedagogue whose writings provide insights for a critical social justice oriented approach to education.
He has all the credentials to be regarded as potentially a key source of inspiration for critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy is that movement which is very much inspired by the work of Paulo Freire and others but which has had its origins in North America. One need only visit the site of the Paulo and Nita Freire
International Project for Critical Pedagogy at McGill University to verify this as we come across such names as those of Henry Giroux, Stanley Aronowitz, Michael Apple, Deborah Britzman, bell hooks, Donaldo Macedo, Peter McLaren, Ira Shor, Antonia Darder and Shirley Steinberg, among the leading figures1 (I would include Maxine Greene and Roger I. Simon among the major North American exponents).
Among the historical figures that include John Dewey, Paulo Freire, Antonio Gramsci, Lev Vygotsky, W.E.B. Du Bois and more recently Jesus ‘Pato’ Gomez2
and Joe Kincheloe, one should also add Don Lorenzo Milani. In this regard, Milani joins other important figures from Italy who provide insights for a critical
pedagogical approach to knowledge, learning and action. These include Danilo Dolci, who wedded community learning and social action, through community
mobilization, ‘reverse strikes’ and ‘hunger strikes’ (Castiglione, 2004), and Aldo Capitini, the anti-fascist peace educator and activist who organized various
educational and mobilizing activities within the context of a peace education movement and his post-war centres for social orientation (COS) (Associazione Amici
di Aldo Capitini, undated). Capitini was a visitor at Milani’s school at Barbiana...
