Scuola di Barbiana

The School of Barbiana (Scuola di Barbiana) was a small full-time school run by the Catholic priest Lorenzo Milani in the parish house of the remote village of Barbiana in the Mugello region of Italy. It began in 1956 with the first six boys of the village who had finished elementary school, and the Fondazione don Lorenzo Milani, which now looks after the building, describes it as a school of industrial training in which Milani was the only teacher. It was a very poor school with a single textbook, in which the boys took turns reading the lesson aloud and Milani explained it, and it differed from other schools in its hours, its content and its teaching methods. Working with Milani, its pupils wrote Letter to a Teacher, a criticism of a class-based school system. The school dissolved in October 1968, the year after Milani's death, and its rooms are kept today as a place for visitors and school groups.