Le scuole di domani: appunti per un dialogo Dewey-Codignola

Abstract

The encounter with Dewey’s pedagogical thought represents, as particularly noted by Franco Cambi, a major turning point in the intellectual development of Ernesto Codignola. The present contribution investigates this dialogue/encounter, beginning with the way in which the two authors interpret the phenomenon of the New Schools movement. Through their description and critical examination of these twentieth-century pedagogical experiments, both authors also reinterpret the legacy of the tradition that starts with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. From their attitudes toward the post-Rousseauian tradition, there emerge—in the interpretation advanced here—both the deeper reasons for the elective affinities that Codignola identifies between an idealist (though increasingly less actualist) approach to education and Deweyan pedagogical pragmatism, and the enduring points of divergence between them.