Figure 1.--This photo was taken in Cittą di Castello, a big village in central Italy, during 1910s. It shows a group of pupils of the local catholic primary school. This school was a charity institution for children of poor families, founded in 1910. For this reason, the pupils are not required to wear any uniform. The boys are wearing their everyday clothing: trousers with suspenders and shirt. Because they belong to poor families, all the boys are also barefoot. Click on the image for more information about the school.

The Catholic church has played a major role in Italian education. There were religion classes taught by priests even in the state schools. Thus I do not think there were parochial schools as in America. Parochial schools were established in America, because the early public schools had aargely Protestant character. This was not the case in Italy. The Catholic Church had another problem. The Papacy resisted Italian unification, primarily because much of centraly Italy was composed of the Papal States including Rome which the Papacy did not want to be included in a unified Italian nation. Thus unification was only achieved with force (1860), The new Italian kingdom did not have diplomatic relations with the Vatican and the pope withdrew to the Vatican. One of the major tasks of the Italian kingdom was to creat a national public school system. The Church because of their failure to recohnize the Kingdom, did not play a role in building the new public school system. Before unification, there were very limited public-financed education in Italy. Iliteracy was a huge problem. Even after unification, financial limitations restricted what the government could do in the sphere of education. The Catholic Church founded some charity schools. There were also private schools. This only changed during the Fascist era. A "Concordato" (agreement) between Holy See and Kingdom of Italy was finally sigbed (1929). It is at this time that Catholic religion lessons in state public school began. This may have changed since as since World War Ii, the Italian school system has become more secular. Italy is a largely Catholic country, thus most private schools were Catholic. Private schools here meant fee paying schools. This could be schools established by individuals and not the Church itself. We are not sure if the Church estanlished schools other than charity schools. There may be some other religious schools in modrn Italy, but we have few details at this time.

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Created: 10:46 PM 12/25/2008
Last updated: 4:50 AM 12/26/2008