Lorenzo Milani

Lorenzo Milani studied at Brera Academy. The recorded working language is Italian, English and French. Hans Joachim Staude is recorded as an influence. Places of work recorded in the authority are Barbiana. Works named in the authority record are Letter to a Teacher, Lettera ai cappellani and Lettera ai giudici.

Milani was born in Florence in 1923 to a rich middle-class family. His father, Albano Milani, and his mother, Alice Weiss, were staunch secularists. Alice Weiss was Jewish and a cousin of Edoardo Weiss, one of Sigmund Freud's earliest disciples and the founder of the Italian Psychoanalytic Association. Milani's paternal great-grandfather was Domenico Comparetti, a leading nineteenth-century philologist. In his own work as an educationist, Milani emphasized learning how to use words effectively. In June 1943, after a period of study at the Brera Academy, Milani converted from agnosticism to Catholicism, perhaps after a chance conversation with Don Raffaele Bensi, who later became his spiritual director. He also exchanged a complacency of the economically fortunate for solidarity with the poor and despised. He was ordained a priest in 1947 and sent to assist Don Daniele Pugi, the old parish priest of San Donato in Calenzano. There he established his first school of the people (scuola popolare), The fact that it served children from both believing and non-believing families scandalized conservative Catholic circles. After Pugi's death in 1954, Milani was sent to Barbiana, a small, remote village in the Mugello region. At Barbiana, Milani continued his radical educational activities despite both clerical and lay opposition.

His recorded languages were Italian, English, French and Spanish. His recorded confession was Catholicism. He was the child of Albano Milani and Alice Milani Comparetti. Recorded as writer, catholic priest, educator and teacher.

In the spring of 1958, he published his first book, Pastoral Experiences (Esperienze pastorali). In December, the Holy Office ordered its withdrawal from circulation as "inopportune", despite failing to find in it any errors of doctrine or breaches of ecclesiastical discipline. Milani made no public objection. In his "Letter to Military Chaplains" ("Lettera ai cappellani militari"}, and a later letter to judges he advocated conscientious objection, the right to say "No". His writings on this subject are recognized as important contributions to anti-military education. In 1965, Milani was put on trial for these writings. Working for a year with his pupils, Milani coordinated the production of Letter to a Teacher (Lettera a una professoressa), which denounced the inequalities of a class-based educational system that advantaged the children of the rich over those of the poor. It was composed by eight boys from the school of Barbiana, according to the "group writing" method inspired by the cooperative writing method promoted by Mario Lodi and influenced by Celesine Freinet. Lodi visited Barbiana and his students engaged in exchanges with those at Barbiana. It has been translated into about forty languages. It introduces many of the themes that became prominent in the later development of the Sociology of Education. The text served as a manifesto for the 68 movement, serving as an indictment of not only the Italian schooling system but Italian society at large.

Milani’s works include; • Esperienze pastorali (1957) • Lettera a una professoressa (1967) • L'obbedienza non è più una virtù e gli altri scritti pubblici • A che serve avere le mani pulite se si tengono in tasca • Carta a una mestra • Perché mi hai chiamato?