Why Freinet is and Milani is not

Abstract

I have always wondered about the difficult reception of Milani in Spain. I turn here to Freinet, by contrast, in an attempt to give an answer to this question. Celestin Freinet and Lorenzo Milani are two of the greats in education of the 20th century, truly great, on a par with, among others, Freire or Neill. But both enjoyed a very different reception in the Spanish teaching profession, also among pedagogical circles and in our university. One always had the doors open to him and soon took root in teachers' movements and in the country's intelligentsia. The other  was a common stranger to the teaching profession, ignored for decades by the intellectual media, not without a certain gesture of disdain or dislike added, which shows a more or less categorical rejection. Why? This is the question I am pursuing here. I will first review, briefly, how the influences of Freinet and Milani permeated among us and then mark the profound differences that characterize them, to then give a full answer to what I am asking myself. This is not a gratuitous intellectual exercise. I will need everything I bring here.