APORTI, FERRANTE. - The name of A., b. at S. Martino dell'Argine in the Mantuan territory on 20 Nov. 1791 and d. at Turin on 29 Nov. 1858, is linked to the pedagogical movement of the Italian Risorgimento, above all for the work he carried out in favor of the establishment of infant schools (v.). A man of charitable spirit, A. felt from his youth the vocation to the priesthood, which in fact he embraced, entering, while still a boy, the seminary of Cremona and receiving holy orders in 1815. In 1816 A. was sent, together with other young Lombard priests, to Vienna to follow there the advanced course of theology and biblical languages, remaining there until 1819. At Vienna A. was a disciple of the pedagogue V. E. Milde, a professor at that University and a follower of Enlightenment doctrines. Having returned to his homeland, A. taught exegesis and hermeneutics in the seminary of Cremona. In 1821 he received the direction of the free elementary schools established by the Austrian government, which did not fail in 1838 to decorate him, for his merits in the field of education, with the equestrian cross of the Iron Crown. In 1844 A. was called to Turin, on the occasion of the establishment in that capital of the special school of method. In the summer of the following year A. obtained the university chair of method, which he inaugurated in August with general approval. In this same year he returned to Cremona only to leave it again at once and take refuge, this time as an exile, in Turin. Proposed, with unfavorable outcome, for the archbishopric of Genoa, he was in Dec. 1848 appointed senator of the Sardinian Kingdom and in 1850 was elected president of the school council and rector of the University of Turin, an office he held, with universal satisfaction, for seven years. Having left this office for reasons of health, he was appointed inspector general of the schools of Turin, but, shortly afterward, on 29 Nov. 1858, A. ended his days.
The name of A. is linked, as has been said, to the establishment of infant schools. Already outside Italy the institution of the schools had developed considerably, in Alsace through the work of Friedrich Oberlin and in England through the work of Robert Owen, and here and there, in Italy and in Europe, along the path of the good Catholic tradition, which went back to St. Jerome Emiliani and to St. Joseph Calasanz, initiatives suited to meeting the educational and moral needs of infancy were not lacking. Certainly A., ever since his stay in Vienna, had not failed to follow the movement of school renewal in Europe and could certainly have had knowledge of what, in the field of infant education, was being thought and experimented outside Italy. In any case there is no doubt that, in founding on 15 Nov. 1827 in Cremona the first school in which he received well-to-do children from 2 to 6 years of age, A. was moved both by his Christian zeal and also by the intention of experimenting with new methods capable of ensuring that « the institution should succeed at once in educating the mind, the heart and the body ». Two years later, on 24 Jan. 1829, A. obtained from the Austrian government the license to establish a fee-paying infant school, at the head of which he placed the Cremonese d. Alessandro Gallina. In this first school certain practices were followed that were believed to be better suited to the education of the heart, the mind and the body of the children. Prayers were recited daily, easy religious hymns were sung, some of the most representative and significant events of sacred history were explained; furthermore there was no lack of some mental arithmetic; then the nomenclature of the most familiar objects and then again physical exercises alternating with play. But A.'s aspiration was, besides pedagogical, Christian, and therefore he desired to be able to gather a group of poor children; in fact, having obtained the consent of the Austrian government, he was able, aided by the munificence of charitable men and institutions, toward the end of 1830, to open the first free school, receiving in it 34 children from 3 to 6 years of age. A first girls' school would be opened in 1833, and in 1834 the first rural infant school would be established at S. Martino dell'Argine.
The method to be followed in this type of school and the advantages that can be drawn from it are set forth by A. in his works, which he published gradually from 1833 to 1847 (v. bibl.). The work of A., even with its defects, has a very notable importance in the history of education. And while the other institutions of this kind could have a more distinctly charitable purpose, that of A. also had an educational aim, because it helped to prepare the soul and body of the children for that clearer intuition of the physical, moral and religious world which the elementary school was to give them. In A.'s new institution, the method of Pestalozzi and that of p. Girard met, in order to receive unity from it. To the principle of intuition was joined that of speaking in the national language. Education and intellectual instruction were to be realized through knowledge of familiar objects and their names, « arranged systematically and distributed by classes, in such a way that while the children learn them, they are directed to distinguish similarities, dissimilarities, the whole and its dependent parts, genera and species ». In this cognition of the thing one was to proceed by the intuitive method which A. calls demonstrative. Moreover, in this first formation of the mind there was no lack of the study of the alphabet and that of religion, the latter being held to be the principal one. For moral and religious education and instruction, prayers, easy religious songs, and study of sacred history were to be recited daily in Italian. Physical instruction was to be obtained through singing, games, gymnastic exercises, frequent recreations and « the studies themselves in the manner of amusement and pleasure ». There is no doubt that A.'s educational plan carried within itself something stale and scholastically incapable of being felt by tender minds. That long listing of words distributed by classes in order to distinguish in them the whole and the dependent parts, the genus and the species; the religious instruction imparted by means of sacred history and the little catechism, all this must have proved not only excessively verbalistic, but also heavy and incapable of being felt by children from 3 to 6 years of age. The learning, moreover, of psalms, prayers and moral maxims was too mnemonic for it to be translated into co-sciousness of the little ones into true norms of conduct and therefore into true moral formation. Not to mention that too much time was devoted to instruction and the school was too much understood and bent to a wholly instructional purpose, even if play and gymnastics were not lacking. In Aporti's institution there was no center of unity because, at bottom, a profound psychological knowledge of the child's soul was lacking in A. himself, his work being reduced to a collection of precepts and empirical notions. But one must try to explain and to penetrate the intimate motive of the institution in order to understand the success it had, the passion it aroused for or against in the men of the Risorgimento. This motive is to be sought in the great love and the Christian spirit by which A. was animated and in the intuition that the formation of man must begin from the tenderest years. Not to mention, moreover, that, pedagogically, despite the noted defects, the idea of gathering children into asylums for the purpose of giving them a first intellectual, moral, religious and physical education, and that of realizing a method which, starting from the sensory intuition of the object, would associate with it the word, the exercise of certain practical activities, the introduction of singing as a means of expression, a school, finally, felt as play, could not fail to arouse adherence and consent in the Italians of the time. Aporti's asylums, lastly, were so permeated with the Christian spirit that although their institution had become almost the banner of the liberals of the time, they were nevertheless introduced into the Papal State under the pontificate of Pius IX, and in 1847 the cardinal prefect of the S. Congregation of Studies wrote to the bishops urging them to promote infant asylums (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'Abbecedario 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.
Bibliography: Cf. that contained in the commemorative discourse of A. Gambaro, A., Mantua 1928; R. Lambruschini, Sulle scuole infantili di Cremona, in Nuovo Ricogliere di Milano, Oct. 1833 (memoir read by Lambruschini at the Accademia dei Georgofili of Florence, in communicating the report of sig. ab. F. A. on the schools of Lombardy, etc.); G. Sacchi, Rivista di opere sull'educazione popolare, in Rivista Europea, Milan 1845, pp. 78-93 and 189-204; C. Boncompagni, Commemorazione di F. A., in Gazzetta Piemontese, Turin 4 and 5 Dec. 1858; id., in Scritti biografici, I, Florence 1878; D. Sacchi, F. A. e gli asili in Italia, in Uomini utili e benefattori del genere umano, II, Milan 1860, pp. 174-78; E. Mayer, Frammenti di un viaggio pedagogico, Florence 1867; S. de Dominicis, Commemorazione di F. A., in Idee per una scienza dell'educazione, Turin 1900; E. Formiggini-Santamaria, La pedagogia italiana nella 1ª metà del sec. XIX, Rome 1920; P. Gobetti, Le scuole di metodo, in Risorgimento senza eroi, Turin 1926; M. Frattini, La Fortuna di F. A., in Rivista pedagogica, 17 (1924); G. Vidari, Alcune lettere di G. Sacchi a F. A., in Rendiconti del R. Ist. lombardo, 2nd series, 55 (1927), pp. 761-83; G. Vidari, Lettere di Piemontesi a F. A., in Atti della R. Accad. di Sc. di Torino, 62 (1927); G. Vidari, Scuole mutue ed asili d'infanzia agli albori del Risorgimento, in Riv. pedagogica, 20 (1927), p. 3 ff.; id. F. A. e il problema dell'educazione infantile in Italia, in Problemi di Educazione e figure di educatori, Turin 1929; M. Barbera, Le scuole infantili e l'ab. A., in La Civ. Catt., 1927, IV, pp. 280-302; 1928, I, pp. 385-99; E. Rosa, La questione delle scuole infantili e dell'ab. A. secondo nuovi documenti, ibid., 1928, III, pp. 385-99; L. Vigna, D. F. A. e l'istruzione religiosa, in Catechista Cattolico, Turin, 19 (1927), pp. 49-53; L. Vigna, D. F. A. sacerdote, in Riv. del clero ital., 8 (1927), pp. 391-96; A. Gambaro, F. A., in La nuova scuola ital., Florence, nos. 19 June, 26 June and 10 July 1927; id., I due apostoli degli asili infantili in Italia, in Levana, 1-2 (1927), 2-3 (1928); id., Contributo al centenario dell'asilo d'infanzia aportiano, Rome 1927; E. Codignola, A. e noi, in Levana, 6 (1927), nos. 3, 4, 5 ff.; M. Rosi, F. A. e gli asili infantili a Lucca, in Rivista pedagogica, 21 (1928), p. 169 ff.; G. Calò, Pestalozzi, A., gli asili infantili, in Riv. pedagogica, 21 (1928, II), now in Dottrae e opere, Lanciano 1932, which also contains Calò's polemical replies to Gambaro, to p. Rosa and to the director of the Voce delle maestre d'asilo, p. 309 ff.; G. Calò, F. A. e gli asili infantili, in the vol. Dottrae e opere, Lanciano 1932; A. Gambaro, F. A. e gli asili nel Risorgimento, II, Turin 1937.
Nino Sammartano