Teaching Nonviolence in the Italian primary and infant School of the second post-war: Aldo Capitini (1899-1968) and Idana Pescioli (1922-2016)

Abstract

My research investigates the proposal of the education’s philosopher Aldo Capitini about the nonviolent teaching in the Italian Second Post-War infant and primary school and focuses on the nonviolent educational practices which has been carried out. Especially, Idana Pescioli, a teacher of the primary and infant school, has been the one to experiment new educational methodologies and a nonviolent approach in the schools of children. I am using a historical-hermeneutic method and various sources: literary sources, documents in public and private archives, ministerial school regulations, internet sites, direct sources. The results achieved so far have highlighted the contribution that Aldo Capitini and Idana Pescioli have offered to the science of education and to the Italian school in the second half of the twenty Century, thanks to many of the initiatives to promote a nonviolent education. Capitini founded, in some Italian cities, the Social Orientation Centers and the Religious Orientation Centers, places where the adults were learning a nonviolent lifestyle; Pescioli, on the other hand, started many experiments in some primary and infant schools, supporting education for peace in the first place. Through the comparison with the pedagogical debate regarding the reform of the italian infant school (1968), emerges the innovative and the revolutionary character of the nonviolent education practiced by Pescioli. In fact, she applied many new techniques to teach to the children the values of peace, solidarity, civil responsibility and empathy, for creating a non-violent school that has not yet become a present reality.