Vittorino Chizzolini: from the “discovery of souls” to a “clearly” real pedagogy of popular schools

Abstract

The paper focuses on the pedagogical thought of the Italian teacher Vittorino Chizzolini concerning popular schools in the Second Post-War, in order to show how he was influenced by some meaningful experiences of unknown teachers, made public by the teacher magazine «Scuola Italiana Moderna» in 1949. Their Individual Written School Memories were one of the main source of inspiration of his “real” pedagogy of popular schools, because they conveyed the ideal of a school-life guided by a magister, devoted to the peculiar needs and potentialities of his/her students.