APORTI, FERRANTE. — The name of A., born at S. Martino dell’Argine in the Mantuan region on 20 November 1791 and deceased at Turin on 29 November 1858, is linked to the pedagogical movement of the Italian Risorgimento, especially because of the work he carried out in favor of the establishment of infant schools (v.). A charitable spirit, A. felt the vocation to the priesthood from his youth, and indeed embraced it, entering the seminary of Cremona while still very young and receiving holy orders in 1815. In 1816 A. was sent, together with other young Lombard priests, to Vienna to attend the advanced course in theology and biblical languages, remaining there until 1819. In Vienna A. was a disciple of the educational theorist V. E. Milde, a lecturer at that University and a follower of Enlightenment doctrines. On returning to his homeland, A. taught exegesis and hermeneutics in the seminary of Cremona. In 1821 he was placed in 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 knight’s cross of the Iron Crown. In 1844 A. was summoned to Turin on the occasion of the establishment in that capital of the extraordinary 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 that same year he returned to Cremona, only to leave it again immediately and take refuge, this time as an exile, in Turin. Having been proposed, unsuccessfully, for the archbishopric of Genoa, he was appointed senator of the Sardinian Kingdom in December 1848, and in 1850 he was elected president of the school council and rector of the University of Turin, an office he held, to universal satisfaction, for seven years. Having relinquished this office for health reasons, he was appointed inspector general of the infant schools of Turin, but shortly afterward, on 29 November 1858, A. ended his days.
A.’s name is linked, as has been said, to the establishment of infant schools. Outside Italy, the institution of infant schools had already developed considerably: in Alsace through the work of Federico Oberlin and in England through that of Roberto Owen; and here and there, in Italy and in Europe, along the path of the sound Catholic tradition, which went back to s. Gerolamo Miani and s. Giuseppe Calasanzio, there was no lack of initiatives intended to meet the educational and moral needs of childhood. Certainly, from the time of his stay in Vienna, A. had not failed to follow the movement of school renewal in Europe, and he must certainly have been aware of what was being thought and experimented with outside Italy in the field of early childhood education. In any case, there is no doubt that when A. founded, on 15 November 1827 in Cremona, the first school in which he welcomed children of well-to-do families from two to six years of age, he was motivated both by his Christian zeal and by the intention of experimenting with new methods capable of ensuring that “the institution would at once educate the mind, the heart, and the body.” Two years later, on 24 January 1829, A. obtained from the Austrian government a license to establish a fee-paying infant school, placing the Cremonese d. Alessandro Gallina at its head. In this first school, certain practices were followed that were believed to be best suited to the education of the children’s hearts, minds, and bodies. Prayers were recited daily, simple religious hymns were sung, and certain of the most representative and significant events of sacred history were explained; there were also some mental arithmetic exercises, followed by the names of the best-known objects, and then physical exercises alternating with play. But A.’s aspiration was not only pedagogical but also Christian, and he therefore wished to gather a group of poor children; indeed, having obtained the consent of the Austrian government, he was able, with the help of the generosity of charitable individuals and institutions, to open the first free school toward the end of 1830, admitting 34 children between three and six years of age. A first school for girls 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 could be derived from it are set out by A. in his works, which he published successively from 1833 to 1847 (v. BIBLICA). A.’s work, despite its defects, has enormous importance in the history of education. While the other institutions of this kind might have had a more distinctly charitable purpose, A.’s also had an educational aim, because it helped prepare the minds and bodies of children for that clearer understanding of the physical, moral, and religious world which elementary school was subsequently to give them. In A.’s new institution, Pestalozzi’s method and that of p. Girard came together and achieved unity. The principle of intuition was joined to that of speaking in the national language. Intellectual education and instruction were to be achieved through knowledge of ordinary objects and their names, “systematically arranged and distributed into classes, so that while the children learn them, they are guided to distinguish similarities, differences, the whole and its dependent parts, genera and species.” In acquiring this knowledge of things, one was to proceed by the intuitive method that A. calls demonstrative. Moreover, in this initial formation of the mind, there was also the study of the alphabet and of religion, the latter being regarded as primary. For moral and religious education and instruction, prayers, simple religious songs, and the study of sacred history were to be recited or pursued daily in Italian. Physical instruction was to be obtained through singing, games, gymnastics, frequent recreation, and “the studies themselves in the manner of amusement and pleasure.” There is no doubt that A.’s educational plan contained something antiquated and, in scholastic terms, incapable of being understood by tender minds. That lengthy enumeration of words distributed into classes in order to distinguish within them the whole and its dependent parts, genus and species; religious instruction imparted through sacred history and the small catechism—all this was bound to prove not only excessively verbalistic but also burdensome and incapable of being felt by children from three to six years of age. The subsequent learning of psalms, prayers, and moral maxims was too mnemonic for it to be translated into co-
consciousness of the little ones as true rules of conduct and hence as genuine moral formation. Not to mention that too much time was devoted to instruction and that the school was understood and bent almost entirely toward an institutional purpose, even though play and gymnastics were not lacking. In the Aportian institution there was no center of unity because, fundamentally, the A. himself lacked a profound psychological understanding of the child’s spirit, his work being reduced to a collection of precepts and empirical notions. But one must seek to explain and penetrate the institution’s innermost motive in order to understand the success it achieved and the passion it aroused, for or against it, among the men of the Risorgimento. This motive is to be sought in the great love and Christian spirit that animated the A., and in the intuition that the formation of man must begin in the tenderest years. Moreover, from a pedagogical standpoint, notwithstanding the defects noted, the idea of gathering children in nursery schools in order to give them an initial intellectual, moral, religious, and physical education, and that of devising a method which, beginning with the sensible intuition of the object, associated with it the word, the practice of certain practical activities, and the introduction of singing as a means of expression—a school, finally, experienced as play—could not fail to arouse the Italians of the time to support and approval. Finally, the Aportian nursery schools were so imbued 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 States under the pontificate of Pius IX; and in 1847 the cardinal prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Studies wrote to the bishops so that they might promote nursery schools (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.
Illustrations: Cf. that contained in the commemorative address by A. Gambaro, A., Mantua 1928; R. Lambruschini, Sulle scuole infantili di Cremona, in Nuovo Ricogliere of Milan, Oct. 1833 (a memoir read by Lambruschini at the Accademia dei Georgofili of Florence, when communicating the report of the Rev. 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, 2ª serie, 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. of 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, Father Rosa, and the director of Voce delle maestre d'asilo, p. 309 ff.; G. Calò, F. A. e gli asili infantili, in the volume Dottrae e opere, Lanciano 1932; A. Gambaro, F. A. e gli asili nel Risorgimento, II, Turin 1937. Nino Sammartano