«A discourse that here must not end, but begin»: the Cremona school in front of Lettera a una professoressa

Abstract

The old and new illiteracy has always aroused, in the history of education, urgencies and rethinkings not devoid of relevant outcomes, also on a practical level. This is the case, among many others, of the denunciation represented, at the dawn of 1968, by Lettera a una professoressa, the controversial text of the boys of Barbiana, which even today, more than fifty years later, we are still talking about, between myth and reality. No less interesting, also to reconstruct the numerous and multiform cultural contexts of the provinces, is the local view, called upon to investigate the attitude (of defence or, vice versa, of questioning one’s own work) of teachers trained according to a different image of school.

This paper presents the case of Cremona also in the light of the recent rediscovery (both critical and documentary) of some teachers, mostly of catholic orientation. The debate on father Milani and his radical indictment is thus intended to sketch a broader overview of the Cremona school, aimed at showing both its resistance and the pressing need for change.