PARATO, GIOVANNI and ANTONINO. — GIOVANNI, teacher and educationalist, born at Sommariva Bosco (Cuneo) in 1816, died at Turin in 1874. Ordained a priest in Rome, he was professor of rhetoric in Lazio; in 1848 he moved to Turin, where discussions concerning the organization of elementary schools were fervently under way.
Appointed a teacher, he devoted himself to preparing various texts for pupils of the different classes, following the progressive method: Esercizi graduati; Composizioni italiane; Grammatica italiana per le elementari superiori, Compendio per le inferiori; Grammatica normale teorica e applicata, per le scuole magistrali, ginnasiali e tecniche, in collaboration with C. Mottura; Manuale per il maestro; Storia romana; Storia sacra; books that display the author’s pedagogical and didactic art and that held first place in the schools for a quarter of a century; above all, Storia sacra became one of the most popular textbooks. For teachers he founded in 1864 the journal: Guida del maestro elementare italiano, initially to facilitate the teacher’s practical application of the university teachings of Turin; later adding a bibliographical review and discussion of the laws and school questions of the day. This was one of the first attempts in Italy at periodical publication intended to guide teachers in the discharge of their task. He did not forget rural teachers, for whom he established prizes and welfare provisions; and at his death his estate benefited the asylum of Carmagnola, the Artigianelli of Turin, and the College of Assisi for orphans of teachers.
ANTONINO, an able assistant to his brother Giovanni, born at Cuneo in ca. 1823, died at Turin in 1908. After teaching rhetoric in various institutions, in 1854 he was called to Turin as an adjunct professor at the University, and in 1861 sent by Minister De Sanctis to Campania as inspector and organizer of the elementary and secondary schools.
Upon returning to Turin, he collaborated with his brother on Guida del maestro italiano and, after his death, took over its direction until 1897. Primary and secondary education owe him a fine series of useful and educational schoolbooks (Libro di lettura; Storia d'Italia; L'Uomo, etc.), and pedagogy owes him the valuable volume: La scuola pedagogica nazionale, Studi educativi, teorici e pratici (Turin 1885), in which he extols the necessity of following the Italian pedagogical tradition, religious instruction, the national ideal, and care of the family, the first school and first society entrusted with the duty of educating; he then refutes the so-called positivist scientific psychology, which was then triumphant, in favor of traditional Italian spiritualism. In Gli asili d'infanzia di Torino in 60 anni di vita he provides highly valuable information for the history of education in the second half of the preceding century.