Don Lorenzo Milani and Maria Maltoni: two experiments of the democratic school

Abstract

Don Lorenzo Milani with the school of Barbiana and Maria Maltoni with the experience of the school of San Gersolè are two representative figures of the 20th century because they proposed and realised an alternative education with a democratic purpose. Although they did not know each other, they both worked in Mugello; Maltoni was from 1920 to 1956 in the municipality of Impruneta; Don Milani created his own educational community in Barbiana. Maria Maltoni was a militant teacher, whose commitment to innovation in childhood education and didactics was appreciated by intellectuals such as Lombardo Radice, Italo Calvino and Francesco Bettini. His education was inspired not by an authoritarian educational model, but by a democratic paradigm that aimed, through knowledge and direct experience of things, at a self-education that transformed children from spectators into protagonists of their own education. This is why he adopted a new methodology involving the use of notebooks and diaries where children wrote and drew, expressing and narrating their daily lives.