Figure 1.--This is a school note book used by an Italian prinary school boy. Note how a boy in 1936 has written in the subject, "Francese". Children were required to use these notebooks with colored Fascist covers and inspiring quotations from Mussolini on the front and back. The uniform pictured is the Fascist youth movement, the Bilial.

We are still collecting information about how school classes were organized in Fascist Italy. We are unsure, fir example, just what ginasio and liceo meant.

Education in Fascist Italy

Italian Fascism was unique among the radical forces produced by the early 20th century. It developing out of economic problems which followed Italy's costly involvement in World War I. Strangely it had no clear predecessor in the 19th entury. The Italain Fascist movement emerged in 1919, catapulting its leader, the journalist Benito Mussolini, into the premiership 3 years later in 1922 and then to the creation of a new political dictatorship beginning in 1925. We believe that the Italian Fascists exercised control over all schools in Italy, although they did not close down Catholic and private schools. We have, however, little information at this time on Fascist school policies. The Fascists were very critical of earlier educational systems. The Fascists prescribed both content and general methods of teaching, as part of Mussolini's pedagogical "reforms." This pedagogical "charter" drawn up by Mussolini's minister of education, Giuseppe Bottai, is a radical reforming document that proposes to substitute for the existing bourgeois system one more responsive to the needs of students not heading for the university. The system would include nursery schools, trade and artisan schools, special training for girls, and the introduction of practical crafts, among other considerations.

Grade System

We do not know at this time what the grade system was during the Fascist era. We noticed divisions at one school of gimnasio inferiore or primary school and gimnasio superiore or secondary school. These may have been 6 year programs, but we are positive about this. There were also liceos, but I think this was an alternative secondary program. The term ginnasio and liceo seems to some extent to be interchangable. We notice for example one ginnasio estatale with a web address of a liceo. A reader writes, "I am as confused as you are about the Italian school system. I thought at first that the ginnasio/liceo split might be a convenient school-leaving point for those who aren't going any further, while those who are going on will do liceo before possibly going on to university. I notice photographs of students in the third year of liceo look to be older than American high school seniors, so maybe the liceo might be thought of as something like an American community college. I hope someone who actually knows something about Italian schools will chime in."

Sources

Created: September 1, 2001
Last updated: March 17, 2004