"Pinocchio by Antonio Calisi to be presented in Triggiano on November 7th" by Carlo Coppola
A Byzantine-rite Catholic priest, theologian, iconographer, journalist and editor of this newspaper, Calisi also teaches religion at Bari’s Socrate classical high school. His book was born in the classroom and steps away from the academic register to become a tool for personal growth, aimed at teenagers but not only at them. Its premise is to read Pinocchio through the eyes of Socrates: the puppet’s misadventures become a journey from flight to freedom, from impulsiveness to conscious choice, from illusion to truth. The method is maieutics, the art of the midwife, who does not fill empty minds but helps bring to light what each person already carries within.
Though written by a theologian, the book is not a work of catechesis. The Christian perspective stays in the background, offered to the reader’s free judgment, while the common ground is that of reason, where believers and non-believers can meet. Educational rigour and secularism, then, in the service of giving young people questions rather than ready-made answers, and of reminding teachers and parents that to educate is not to tell someone who they must become, but to accompany them in discovering who they might become. The question in the title concerns us all: what are you made of?
by Carlo Coppola
