**APORTI, Ferrante.** The name of A. is linked to the pedagogical movement of the Italian Risorgimento, especially for the work he carried out in favor of the establishment of infant schools (*v.*). A charitable spirit, A. felt from his youth the vocation to the priesthood, which he indeed embraced, entering, while still young, the seminary of Cremona and receiving holy orders in 1815. In 1816, A. was sent, along with other young Lombard priests, to Vienna to attend advanced courses in theology and biblical languages, remaining there until 1819. In Vienna, A. was a student of the pedagogist V. E. Milde, professor at that university and follower of Enlightenment doctrines. Upon his return home, A. taught exegesis and hermeneutics at the seminary of Cremona. In 1821, he took charge of the free elementary schools established by the Austrian government, which in 1838 did not fail to decorate him, for his merits in the educational field, with the knighthood of the Iron Crown. In 1844, A. was called to Turin on the occasion of the establishment in that capital of extraordinary method schools. In the summer of the following year, A. obtained the university chair of method, which he inaugurated on August 1 with general approval. In the same year, he returned to Cremona but soon left again, this time as an exile, to take refuge in Turin. Proposed, with unfavorable outcome, to the archbishop of Genoa, in December 1848 he was appointed senator of the Kingdom of Sardinia and in 1850 was elected president of the school council and rector of the University of Turin, a position he held, to universal satisfaction, for seven years. Having resigned this position for health reasons, he was appointed general inspector of the infant schools of Turin, but shortly afterward, on November 29, 1858, A. closed his days.
As mentioned, the name of A. is linked to the establishment of infant schools. Already outside Italy, the institution of infant schools had developed considerably, in Alsace through the work of Frédéric Oberlin and in England through the work of Robert Owen, and here and there, in Italy and Europe, following the good Catholic tradition that went back to St. Jerome Emiliani and St. Joseph Calasanz, there were initiatives aimed at meeting the educational and moral needs of childhood. Certainly, A., during his stay in Vienna, had not failed to follow the movement of educational renewal in Europe and could certainly have known what was thought and experimented abroad in the field of infant education. However, there is no doubt that by founding, on November 15, 1827, in Cremona, the first school that welcomed children aged 2 to 6, A. was driven both by his Christian zeal and by the intention of experimenting with new methods to ensure that «the institution would succeed in educating the mind, the heart, and the body». Two years later, on January 24, 1829, A. obtained from the Austrian government permission to establish a fee-paying infant school, at the head of which he placed the Cremonese priest Alessandro Gallina. In this first school, some practices were followed that were believed to be better suited to the education of the heart, mind, and body of children. Daily prayers were recited, easy religious hymns were sung, and some of the most representative and significant events of sacred history were explained; moreover, mental arithmetic was not lacking, nor was the nomenclature of the most familiar objects, nor physical exercises alternated with play. But A.’s aspiration was, beyond pedagogical, Christian, and therefore he wished to gather a group of poor children; in fact, having obtained the consent of the Austrian government and aided by the generosity of charitable men and institutions, by the end of 1830 he was able to open the first free infant school, welcoming 34 children aged 3 to 6. A first female infant school would open in 1833, and in 1834 the first rural infant school would be established in S. Martino dell’Argine.
The method to be followed in this type of school and the advantages that could be derived from it are set out by A. in his works, which he published progressively from 1833 to 1847 (*V. BIBLICA.*). The work of A., despite its flaws, holds a very notable place in the history of education. While other institutions of this kind might have a more distinctly charitable purpose, A.’s also had an educational aim, because it helped to prepare the minds and bodies of children for that clearer understanding of the physical, moral, and religious world that the elementary school would later provide. In A.’s new institution, the methods of Pestalozzi and those of Fr. Girard were combined to form a unity. The principle of intuition was joined to that of speaking in the national language. Intellectual education and instruction were to be achieved through the knowledge of common objects and their names, «systematically arranged and distributed by classes, so that while children learn them, they are guided to distinguish similarities, differences, the whole and its dependent parts, genera and species». In this knowledge of things, one was to proceed by the intuitive method that A. calls demonstrative. Moreover, in this first formation of the mind, the study of the alphabet and that of religion were not lacking, the latter being considered the principal subject. For moral and religious education and instruction, daily prayers in Italian, easy religious hymns, and the study of sacred history were to be recited. Physical education was to be achieved through singing, games, gymnastic exercises, frequent recreations, and «studies themselves in the manner of amusement and pleasure». There is no doubt that A.’s educational plan contained something outdated and scholastically incapable of being grasped by tender minds. That long list of words arranged by classes to distinguish in them the whole and its dependent parts, genera and species; religious instruction imparted through sacred history and the small catechism—all this had to result, besides being excessively verbalistic, heavy and incapable of being felt by children aged 3 to 6. The learning of psalms, prayers, and moral maxims was too mnemonic to be translated into
science of the little ones into true rules of conduct and thus into true moral formation. Nor should it be forgotten that too much time was devoted to instruction and that the school was too much understood and bent to purely instructional ends, even if play and gymnastics were not lacking. In the *portiata* institution, there was no unifying center because, fundamentally, a deep psychological understanding of the child’s mind was lacking in the author himself, reducing his work to a collection of precepts and empirical knowledge. Yet one must seek to explain and penetrate the inner motive of the institution to understand the success it enjoyed and the passion—whether for or against—it aroused among the men of the Risorgimento. This motive must be sought in the great love and Christian spirit that animated the author and in the intuition that human formation must begin in the earliest years. Nor should it be forgotten that, pedagogically, despite the acknowledged defects, the idea of gathering children into nurseries to provide them with a first intellectual, moral, religious, and physical education, and the effort to devise a method that, starting from the child’s sensory intuition of the object, linked this to speech, the practice of certain activities, the introduction of song as a means of expression, and a school ultimately felt as play—these ideas could not fail to win the adherence and approval of Italians of the time. The *portiata* nurseries were so imbued with Christian spirit that, although their institution had almost become the banner of the liberals of the day, they were nonetheless introduced into the Papal States under the pontificate of Pius IX, and in 1847 the Cardinal Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Studies wrote to the bishops urging them to promote infant nurseries (E. Formiggini-Santamaria, *L'istruzione popolare nello Stato pontificio*, Bologna 1909).
**Works:** *Sulle scuole di Lombardia e principalmente sulle infantili*, in *Atti della Accademia dei Georgofili*, 11 (1833), pp. 206 ff.; *Manuale di educazione e di ammaestramento per le scuole infantili*, Cremona 1833; *Guida dei fondatori e direttori delle scuole infantili di carità derivata da quanto si pratica nelle scuole infantili di Cremona*, Milan 1836; *Metodo per adoperare fruttuosamente «l'Abbeccadario e sillabario ad uso dell'Infanzia» e definizione delle parole in esso contenute, ossia «Maniera pratica di sviluppare le idee ed educare l'intelletto e la mente dei fanciulli proposta alle madri di Famiglia e alle istitutrici dell'infanzia*, Cremona 1840; *Elementi di Pedagogia o Storia della ragionevole educazione dei fanciulli*, Rome, 1847.
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Nino Sammartano.