A Light in the Classroom: Vittorio De Seta's Diario di un maestro and the Bringing of Experiential Education into Italian Living Rooms

Abstract

A Light in the Classroom:Vittorio De Seta's Diario di un maestro and the Bringing of Experiential Education into Italian Living Rooms Francesco Fiumara (bio) I frutti di un'opera educativa genuina non possono andar perduti —Bruno Ciari On 11 February 1973, when Vittorio De Seta's four-part miniseries Diario di un maestro premiered on Italian television, I was ten and ready to graduate from elementary school. As a student of a very traditional private school, I was deeply impressed by the vicissitudes of novice teacher Bruno D'Angelo (played by Bruno Cirino) in his ghettoized fifth-grade class of suburban Rome. The genuine encouragement that those disadvantaged schoolchildren received from—and ultimately gave to—their open-minded teacher was entirely unknown to my privileged classmates and me. So, sadly, were the actual socioeconomic conditions of their families and the extreme harshness of their everyday existence. At that time, I could not even imagine that schooling (and the lack thereof) could be an issue for kids my own age; nor, probably, could many of the more than twelve million viewers [End Page S-303] who, just like my family and me, faithfully followed the series.1 In fact, not even De Seta, well known for his civically engaged films,2 knew much about the dysfunctional status of the Italian education system before he embarked on the project. Yet, he embraced his task so committedly that Diario di un maestro not only shows a distinct awareness of the unique terms of the pedagogical debate of the time, but also becomes itself part and parcel of it.3 Positively, while getting wider television audiences acquainted with the methods and efforts of passionate educators like the fictional D'Angelo, De Seta harnessed the outreach power of the medium to take a clear stance against the continuously missed opportunities of too many children, bound to receive their basic education in inadequate and virtually socially discriminating schools. For the first time, in Italy, a fictional work specifically conceived for television went far beyond the established conventions of its genre and used the small screen as an agent of change. Just like the masterpieces of neorealist cinema, an absolute model for De Seta, Diario di un maestro discretely guides its viewers through the inner dynamics of delicate social issues, such as equity and equality in education. As we will see, however, this groundbreaking result did not come about effortlessly. Amid enthusiasm, drawbacks and unexpected developments, the project put De Seta's expertise to the test for nearly four years.4 It all begins in April 1969. Prompted by the screenwriter Ugo Pirro, De Seta reads the recently published memoir Un anno a Pietralata by Albino Bernardini, one of the pioneers of experiential education in Italy, alongside Fiorenzo Alfieri, Bruno Ciari, and Mario Lodi.5 In Un anno a Pietralata, Bernardini recounts in very vivid terms his [End Page S-304] struggling experience as a third-grade teacher of an all-male class in a failing school of a neglected neighborhood of the Roman urban periphery. While he openly denounces the desperate conditions in which suburban schools operate, he brightly highlights the degree to which the caring activism of a motivated teacher can transform an underperforming classroom into a dynamic community where all students (regardless of their individual circumstances) may eventually become motivated learners. Through Bernardini, De Seta abruptly discovers how urgently the Italian school system needs deep reform; but he also learns about the difference that open-minded teachers can make in the life or their students. Without much ado, he considers the possibility of turning the memoir into a TV movie. He proposes his work to the public broadcaster RAI—the sole radio and television network operating in Italy at that time—and, after committing himself to writing a screenplay, he explores the feasibility of his project by making contacts, searching possible filming locations and conducting local casting calls. Yet, as soon as he meets Bernardini, reads Lodi and delves into the innovative techniques that experiential teachers like them used in their classes (where the norm was learning from doing, rather than from the teacher), he promptly realizes that, however accurate, no screenplay...