Tra l’Oriente indiano e la pedagogia italiana del Novecento: Montessori, Capitini, Gandhi, Krishnamurti

Abstract

This article places twentieth-century Italian pedagogy in dialogue with Indian wisdom by focusing on four masters: Maria Montessori, Aldo Capitini, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Jddu Krishnamurti. The hypothesis underlying the brief historical reconstruction is that the Theosophical Society influenced the four pedagogies where education had the mission to disseminate a new spirituality by building a bridge between East and West. The purpose of this comparison was to trace the roots of a fruitful encounter of the pedagogy of the West with the traditions of the East, with its educational models, its philosophies, its religions, in the light of the challenges of our time posed by the confrontation between different cultures and civilisations.