The “Florentine School” of the 1950s. The journal “Scuola e Città” and critical-rational, secular and progressive pedagogy, inspired by John Dewey’s thought

This paper aims to present the so-called “Florentine School”, the name which was given to a group of Italian scholars linked to the Florentine University who, starting from the second postwar period, developed an Italian pedagogical model in- spired by John Dewey’s thoughts. The main characteristics of this School are described throughout the work of its founder, Ernesto Codignola (1885–1965). Lamberto Borghi (1907–2000) succeeded Codignola in teaching Pedagogy at the University of Florence and in the direction of the magazine “Scuola e Città” and of the publishing house La Nuova Italia. The first outlines the historical context in which the conditions for the birth of a democratic and libertarian pedagogy as a national model were created in Italy, in contrast with the fascist authoritarian tradition. The second part focuses on the interpretative activity of Deweyian pedagogy by the Florentine School in order to apply it to the Italian reality. The concrete case taken into consideration is the “Scuola-Città Pestalozzi” experiment. The third part focuses on the monthly magazine of educational problems and school policy “Scuola e Città” (1950).