La pedagogia di Makiguchi e la sua applicazione nella scuola primaria: studio di un caso in Brasile

This research aims to illustrate the revolutionary thought of Japanese educationalist Tsunesaburo Makiguchi – still not very popular in western countries – and to highlight how extraordinarily modern and topical it still is nowadays as school is experiencing a global crisis. Author of three books, Makiguchi elaborated his pedagogical system proposing a true reform of knowing subjects, reviewing the relation between subject and object, and recontextualising knowledge, so as to enable individuals to develop their own potentials in view of collective interest fulfillment. Value prevailing over truth; happiness as the goal of education; the proposal of “human revolution” as a process of transformation of own life, which unavoidably ends up changing the society, too – they are all fundamental features of Buddhist philosophy, which also can be found in Makiguchi’s educational thought. The suggestion stimulated by Makiguchi’s ideas in his books roused my interest and wish to learn the didactic tools and patterns putting his intuitions into practice. My journey across Brazil resulted in an intense ethnographic research activity aiming to observe the “Makiguchi in Action” Project, initiated by Brazil SGI’s educational division and tested in Sao Paulo’s state schools. All the reflections expressed in this work, matured upon Makiguchi’s books and stemming from my on-site research, highlight a type of education aiming to form complete human beings through significant relationships and conceiving happiness as both the instrument and the goal to express the positive potentials lying in every human life