LORENZO MILANI: A POSSIBLE AND NECESSARY PEDAGOGY FOR THE POOREST

 

Joaquín Díaz Atienza

(Updated: 19/12/22)

MMy experience as a child psychiatrist in the public health system, and my special interest in children with learning difficulties, have given me the great opportunity and satisfaction of getting to know Lorenzo Milani, educator and priest born in Florence in 1923 and died in Barbiana in 1967.

Lorenzo Milani He was born into an upper-class and cultured family. He was baptized for convenience (his mother was Jewish and fascism was on the rise in Italy). His interest in art led him to also become interested in religion, which resulted in his "real conversion" to Catholicism, and he was ordained a priest in 1947. He was assigned the Parish of Saint Donato in Calenzano (Florence) as assistant priest.

It is precisely in this parish that he observes his sermons are not understood by the parishioners due to his limited vocabulary. Here he also notices the close link between ignorance and social class, specifically between lack of education and poverty. It was this last point that gave rise to his commitment to the poorest, and he set himself the priority of increasing the cultural awareness of his parishioners. To this end, he created the San Donato Popular School with a clearly critical of the official school of its time and with the aim of minimizing the disastrous consequences of public school for its parishioners. Classes were held at night and on weekends.

Foundations of L. Milani's pedagogy.

All people, except in particular cases and situations, are born biologically equal; it is society that places us among the rich or the poor, the privileged or the impoverished. The privileged, the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, maintain their privileges through a wide variety of means. socio-political and control instruments, among others, education[1].

[1] We are not all born equal. Our genetic makeup is certainly a factor that plays a significant role in our development, although it is not the sole determining factor. Other factors include the obstetric conditions during pregnancy, especially nutritional quality and obstetric care. Of course, children born into economically and educationally privileged environments will have an undeniable advantage from birth.

Milani proposes a liberating pedagogy from cultural poverty, in contrast to the bourgeois pedagogy that maintains a system at its service, increasingly accentuating the differences between rich and poor. For Milani, the school failure It is a consequence of bourgeois pedagogy, designed to maintain its privileges; for the bourgeoisie, school failure is the result of natural differences, a problem derived from differences in intelligence quotient, capacity, and not from the absence of equal opportunities.

In short, bourgeois pedagogy is selective, competitive, and classist. It doesn't provide the same educational tools for everyone because it fails to consider that not all students start with, or maintain, the same conditions. Bourgeois pedagogy tolerates and justifies academic failure because what matters is maintaining its academic privileges.

This approach, seemingly excessively radical and outdated, even accepting that school conditions have changed, that access to compulsory education is universal, and that technology has revolutionized teaching methods, still holds true. Education is universal and compulsory; theoretically, the entire population is enrolled in school; therefore, one might deduce that there is an academic environment where equal opportunities exist. On the contrary, nothing could be further from the truth. appearance of socio-educational justice: Children from poor backgrounds, simply by virtue of being poor, no longer start with the same opportunities. Their families are also not in the same position to provide them with academic support, nor are they as culturally motivated as those of wealthier families. Even more profoundly, poor students internalize values ​​and life priorities that are not centered on increasing abstract knowledge, which is what public schools offer, when their most immediate needs take precedence.

Milani proposes his liberating pedagogy in two books: one collective, “Letter to a teacher” and the one reviled by the official church and by the politicians of Christian democracy, “Pastoral Experiences”.

Principles of Milanese pedagogical praxis

Milanese pedagogy has been both praised and condemned as utopian, inappropriate, and superseded by more modern approaches. Many base their rejection on an intentional misinterpretation of the following paragraph: “So that the dream of equality is no longer just a dream, we propose three reforms:

1. 1. Do not make repeaters

1. 1. Those who seem foolish should be given full-time instruction.

1. 1. "All you need to do to make lazy people is give them a motivation."

To achieve this goal, Milani proposed several measures

a) la afterschool or double schoolThat is, eliminating unproductive time (no recess), no vacations, and using summers for language learning. Milani used to say that language has been used as the wall that maintains the sacred borders of homelands, a wall only surmountable by learning languages.

b) Great importance is given to language and the word. This involved reading the newspaper daily in a didactic and critical way; reading the constitution; reading and interpreting employment contracts; collective reading; periodically inviting speakers to delve deeper into more specialized topics; classes among the students (the more advanced ones helped those who had difficulties); reading the gospel, although not with a catechetical purpose.

Milani used to say that “Against the unmotivated slacker, he was made to feel like the top of the class”[2], “I have learned that other people’s problems are also my problems.”

[2] One of the most effective techniques for increasing student motivation is to ignore their lack of motivation and, through the teacher's interventions, help them understand their crucial role in the success of their classmates, emphasizing that their activity is fundamental to the smooth running of the class. In short, it's about making them feel like active participants. There's nothing mysterious about how this approach leads to improved student motivation. We could say it's the Pygmy Effect, specifically in the realm of motivation.

d) Language is the foundation upon which learning is based. Language empowers thought, and the two reinforce each other during the learning process. The greatest obstacle educators face when working with impoverished communities is the poverty of language skills. Milano stated that the poor lack motivation to learn language because they haven't discovered its power to transform, build, and shape the future. When language is not sufficiently mastered, we are unable to express ourselves and understand others. Educators must teach language, an essential tool for both reflection and action.

Milanese pedagogical methodology.

In this section I follow the professor's ideas. Gonzalo Serna Alcántara (1) since, in my opinion, it structures the method used by Lorenzo Milani quite well. It states that the Milanese method is based on three principles: it would be of Socratic inspiration, mutual teaching, and teamwork, definition of a committed teaching staff with the poor and, finally, some clear aims of what education is.

With respect to Socratic inspirationHe argues that the Milanese methodology is fundamentally based on dialogue and induction, to make students aware of their own ignorance he used irony and maieuticsThis is only possible if students possess humility, courage, confidence, hope, and critical thinking.

With respect to mutual teaching and teamworkMilano starts from the conviction that we all have something to teach and something to learn; individual paces must be respected. Awakening the consciousness of the person: moving from being an object to being part of the group.

El role of the teacher He viewed it from a class-based perspective, that is, as a defender of the poorest, although he presented this class position without any confrontational content, since he avoided conflict at all times. He repeatedly stated that the best tool to overcome hatred was education. He is a proponent of radical criticism of institutions and teachers who sacrifice their vocation for the bureaucratic role.

In summary, one might ask whether Lorenzo Milani's proposed pedagogy and teaching methods are applicable today. I would answer that if anyone has doubts, they should visit that "fourth world" on the outskirts of any city, observe the schools, attendance, the curriculum, and the academic demands and objectives. After the visit I propose, everyone would see, as they say nowadays in marketing, “a niche of opportunity for Barbian pedagogy.”

Important dates in the life of Lorenzo Milani((Tiscar Espigares. Lorenzo Milani. Editorial CSS. Madrid, 1995; pp: 102-104.))

(1) Serna Alcántara Gonzalo. Pedagogy in the service of the poor: the relevance of Lorenzo Milani today. Didac 46: 18-22, Autumn, 2005