CUOCO, VINCENZO. – Born in Civitacampomarano in the Molise on 1 October 1770 and died in Naples on 14 December 1823, he is one of the most representative figures of Italian culture during the Napoleonic era. He was a political writer, historian, and educationalist. He took part in the Neapolitan events of 1799; after the brief interlude of the Parthenopean Republic, he was arrested and sent into exile. He went to Marseilles, then to Paris, and later to Milan (1800), where he formed a friendship with Manzoni. There he directed the *Nuovo giornale italiano*, in which, seeking a common point of encounter for the conscience of Italians, he pursued a noble aim of popular education.
Reflecting on the Neapolitan events of 1799, Cuoco wrote his *Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione di Napoli* (Milan 1801), in which he highlights the deficient and negative aspects of the Neapolitan revolution, above all in its abstract origins, springing from an entirely intellectualist exigency among a handful of generous young men. Good institutions, he warns in a letter to Vincenzo Russo on Mario Pagano’s constitution, are those that are born and live within the conscience of the people. Cuoco felt deeply the educational exigency, whether he sought in his philosophical novel *Platone in Italia* a sense of balance and harmony in the national—and particularly southern—conscience within an ancient Italian wisdom, or whether he deliberately outlined a plan of studies for the Kingdom of Naples.
After the Napoleonic conquest, Cuoco returned to Naples and held high offices in the administration of the state. In 1809 King Joachim summoned him to be part of the commission tasked with preparing a draft law on public education. In a lengthy report, Cuoco set out the principles that should inspire a radical reform of studies in Naples. There is no doubt that the pedagogical ideas current at the time are reflected in the Report, and in particular the influence of J. J. Rousseau and J. H. Pestalozzi is evident; Cuoco’s vision of education is distinctly Vichian. Starting from the well-known Vichian dignity of the spiritual process, Cuoco believed that the child is first and foremost sense and imagination, then memory, and finally reason. “If you disturb this order,” he warns, “you will weary the intellect with premature effort and stifle the other faculties, preventing their development. Believe me,” he says, “if you destroy the true child, you will have destroyed a man.”
For Cuoco, instruction was the exclusive task of the state, which, however, while it had to direct opinions, was not to profess any particular one. Instruction had to be universal, embracing both the sciences and the arts, and public inasmuch as all citizens had an equal right to II. In his conception, the school had to be: for all (primary and free), for many (secondary), and for a few (higher or sublime), the latter being necessary to promote the sciences. Elementary instruction included reading, writing, arithmetic, and moral education, but not religion, which he wished to be imparted by ministers of the Church. Cuoco also wanted women to receive an education more suited to their nature. In the Project there is also the vision of a school founded on work that would promote the improvement of the people in the arts and trades. University instruction, as that which was to promote the sciences, was held in the highest consideration in the Project; to this end, Cuoco planned the establishment