Critical pedagogy and citizenship : Lorenzo Milani and the school of Barbiana

Abstract

This paper discusses the pedagogical challenge of providing an education that stresses the connection between learning and power and the potential, for social solidarity, of a collective approach to learning based on a process of what Freire and other critical pedagogues would call ‘critical literacy.’ The stimulus for such a pedagogical approach to citizenship derives from the legacy of a radical and very controversial Tuscan priest, Don Lorenzo Milani (1923-1967), and the students from an isolated and impoverished farming community in the Mugello region of Tuscany who constituted the School of Barbiana. The pedagogical ideas emanating from Lorenzo Milani and his school of Barbiana remain a source of reference in debates about schooling and social activism in Italy and elsewhere. The key text to emerge from this school, Lettera a Una Professoressa (Letter to a Teacher), was an important source of reference during the turbulent ‘sessantotto’ (1968) period in Italy. The paper provides an analysis of this and other works with whihc Lorenzo Milani was connected.