PARRAVICINI, LUIGI ALESSANDRO. - Educationist, b. in Milan in 1800, d. in Venice on 4 Aug. 1880.
Director for 16 years of the elementary schools of Como, he spent three autumns (1837-39) in the Canton of Ticino, called there by that government, for lectures on methodics, then in 1842 he was transferred to Venice as director of the technical school. He certainly played an important part in the educational movement of the Risorgimento, although without particularly political overtones. The fruit of his teaching is the Manuale di pedagogia e metodica generale (2 vols., Locarno 1842-45), in which he echoes the recent doctrines of Girard, Pestalozzi and Milde; and in a purely empirical form, but with very good sense and experience, he traces, for the first time, a systematic picture of the doctrine of education and gives detailed rules for a total education of all the pupil's dispositions, within the ordinary scheme of physical, intellectual, aesthetic and moral education. Greater fame was brought him by the Giannetto (Como 1837), winner of the competition announced in 1833 by the Società Fiorentina per l'istruzione elementare, for a book to serve "for reading and as a means of moral instruction." He seeks, in fact, with real figures and vivid recollections drawn from our history, to instil in children the desire to improve themselves, to overcome difficulties, to follow new discoveries. However, the moral aim too much overlays, without merging with, the instructional aim. Among Italian and foreign books the work went through more than 65 editions, remaining the most widespread and effectively formative text for young people in the schools until the appearance and the propaganda of Cuore by E. De Amicis.
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