PARRAVICINI, LUIGI ALESSANDRO

PARRAVICINI, LUIGI ALESSANDRO. - Pedagogist, born in Milan in 1800, died in Venice on August 4, 1880.

Director of the elementary schools of Como for 16 years, he spent three autumns (1837-39) in Canton Ticino, having been invited by that government to give lessons in methodology,

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 brings the echo of the recent doctrines of Girard, Pestalozzi, and Milde; and in a purely empirical form, but with very good sense and experience, he outlines for the first time a systematic framework of the doctrine of education and provides 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 to him by Giannetto (Como 1837), winner of the competition announced in 1833 by the Florentine Society for Elementary Education for a book to serve "as reading and a means of moral instruction." He attempts, in fact, with real figures and vivid memories drawn from our history, to instill in children the desire for self-improvement, to overcome difficulties, and to follow new discoveries. However, the moral purpose is too heavily superimposed, without blending, upon the instructional purpose. Between Italian and foreign editions, the book exceeded 65 editions, remaining the most widespread and effectively formative text for youth in schools until the appearance and propaganda of Cuore by E. De Amicis.