Anna Lorenzetto – Wikipedia

Anna Maria Lorenzetto (Rome, April 18, 1914 – Grosseto, 25 May 2001 ^[first] ) It was an Italian pedagogist.

He graduated both in philosophy (with Pantaleo Carabellese in 1943) and in letters (with Natalino Sapegno in 1940) ^[2] . From 1945 to 1947 he was a voluntary assistant at the University of Rome first at the Faculty of Philosophy then with that of Psychology ^[2] .

During the Second World War, he made a regular demand to enter the Italian Army, in which the CAF, a female assistance body had been set up since 1945. ^[3]

Since October 1945, moreover, – and therefore from its establishment – joined the Italian women’s UDI -Union Management Committee ^[4] However, the relationship with the union was not easy: “Compared to the relationship with the PCI and the emancipation policies, tensions and divergences were recorded in the UDI among those who supported the” “support” line to the workers’ struggle “[…] and those who proper to autonomy. A group that includes the shareholders Anna Lorenzetto and Maria Comandini Calogero, names that refer to a decisive civil and social commitment, an example is the large campaign against the illiteracy hired by both after the war. These were figures with a solid intellectual and political stature, which, starting from the autonomy of the individual, the cardinal principle of liberal socialism, projected the speech on emancipation along a horizon capable of keeping different aspects together. On the function of the UDI, the women of the Pd’a, although adhering to it, nourished more than one doubt since the foundation, both as regards autonomy from the PCI and its real function of female aggregation center. ” ^[5]

He is among the founders of the National Union for the fight against illiteracy (Unla) of which he was elected president in 1964 (he was vice -president since 1961 during the presidency of Francesco Saverio Nitti and Vincenzo Arangio Ruiz) and always confirmed until 1981, with the two -year interval ^[6] When it was called in 1971 by UNESCO to direct the literacy division and the education division of adults in Paris ^[7] .

As president of the Unla promoting committee, a work of literacy in Southern Italy embarked on in 1947, an activity that will have an important impact in the civil life of the country ^[2] .

Between ’47 and ’48 he works on a research on the socio-economic-cultural situation in 99 municipalities in Calabria and Basilicata. Also in 1947 he gave life to Basilicata to the popular movement of the municipal committees for the fight against illiteracy. The success is such that the Provider for Studies wants the collaboration of the Unla to create the schools for adults provided for by current legislation (law of 17 December 1947) ^[8] .

In 1949 Lorenzetto created the first centers of popular culture of the Unla, which will see a widespread diffusion throughout southern Italy ^[8] . This reality is described in two documentaries commissioned by the same scholar: the first, of 1951 and directed by Michele Gandin is titled “Christ did not stop in Eboli”; The second, a few years later and always by the same director is titled “Only the alphabet is not enough”. Both are rewarded at the Venice Film Festival ^[9] .

Also in 1951, a project for two experimental classes of the Unla in Calabria with Maria Montessori began, of which she had been a girl as a child for a short time; However, the collaboration had to stop because of the death of the prestigious Marche scholar. ^[7]

For this incessant activity in favor of the spread of democracy and knowledge through the UNLA, in 1958 he was awarded the Feltrinelli Prize ^[ten] .

He then became in 1968 Full Professor of Adult Education at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (Faculty of Magisterium who later became part of the University of Roma Tre Studies), after obtaining free teaching in adult education in 1967 ^[7] .

He was also a member of the Management Committee of the UNESCO Italian National Commission ^[6] .

In 1970 he was awarded by UNESCO of the “Nadezhda K. Krupskaya” award and in 1977 of the gold medal of the meritorious of the school, culture and art ^[7] .

Once his university activity is over, he moved to Porto Ercole ^[11] In the province of Grosseto, he died in Grosseto in 2001.

In 1961 a campaign began in Cuba in favor of the fight against illiteracy and Unesco commissioned Anna Lorenzetto and Karel-Neys, an American scholar, to conduct a study on the Cuban project. Their mission was completed from 27 February to 27 March 1964 ^[twelfth] . The result was that the presence of illiteracy in Cuba was estimated below 4%, a level lower than that established by the United Nations target.

The success was traced back to the popular will and the commitment of the Castrists in this sense, and these reasons were reported in a document printed by UNESCO in 1965, but which was not made accessible to the public for the evident embarrassment that such an enthusiastic adhesion To the methods and results of the Cuban initiative against illiteracy could arouse in an international body during the years of the Cold War. ^[13]

The text was then published with the title Methods and Means Utilized in Cuba to Eliminate Illiteracy: Study Done by a Unesco Mission in March, 1964

• Alphabet and illiteracy . Rome, Armando Armando, 1962
• Alphabet and society . 1963
• The discovery of the adult . 1964
• The absent school . 1968
• Historical and theoretical features of permanent education . Rome, Edizioni Studium, 1976
• Towards an educational ecosystem. Company/environment/project . Rome, Edizioni Studium, 1988
• From the deep south. History of an idea . Rome, Edizioni Studium, 1994

He also directed the magazine “Reality and problems of adult education” from 1964 to 1971.