Figure 1.--This is a third grade class photo taken in Siliqua, a town in southern Sardinia, during 1960s. It is a very large class of 42 boys. Italy thanks to the Italian Economic Miracle was finally was obtaining obtaining the tax revenue to adequately fund the education system. This s a process just beginning so we still ee some large classes like this. Most of the boys are wearing school smocks, and many are also wearing white collars and bows. One boy in the front row is not wearing shoes. Perhaps he didn't own any. This became less common in the 1960s, but it was still not unusual in Sardinia. Note that he is seated in the front row, so bare feet were not seen as inappropriate.

Few Italian children wore school uniforms. School smocks were, however, still common in Italy during the 1960s. And that was a kind of school uniform. Many Italian primary children in the 1960s wore school smocks,. often dark blue smcks as you can see here (figure 1). The boys mostly wore short pants. The girls wore dresses. The smocks commonly were worn with shite collars and small floppy bows, but this varied somewhat from school to school, both the rule and ebforcement. An Italian reader tells us, "The dress code was stated by provincial school offices and the individual schools. In my school near Milan in the mid-1960s, boys wore black smocks with white collars and blue bows, while girls wore white smocks with white collars and pink bows. The bow was optional during the last two years. In any case, no pupil could be rejected from the state school for lack of clothing. I don't remember classmates coming to school without a smock, but there were certainly many who did elsewhere, as the photos show. The same can be said for other aspects of dress. I don't know if there were rules about footwear in my school, but no one wore flip-flops or went barefoot in our school, and only a few girls wore open-toe sandals without socks. In Sardinia, however, there were still pupils who were barefoot. I too wore flip-flops and sometimes walked barefoot, but I never thought I could do that at school." While the school reuired smocks, a reader writes, "I count 6 boys not wearing a smock. I wonder what happened." We are not entirely sure. We believe that there were variations from schol to school depending on the school principle ad the teachers. Also we suspect that in the 60s that the boys theselves had more say as to what they wore. And of course mother was also a factor. We do not yet have the information needed to piece all that togeter. Most children by the 1960s came to school with shoes which was not the case earlier. There were,however, still some children in poorer areas who came barefoot. Often there were some children who did not wear smocks. We are not sure just why that was. The schools seemed to have tolerated some diversity. But not all schools required smocks, but it was very common. Apperently it was a matter of individual school policy. We note city boys, possibly in Rome, feeding pigeons in a piazza. The boys wear suit jackets rather than smocks. We are not sure what role the Minidtyry of Education played. A few boys wore long pants, but short pants were more common. We do not see a lot of children wearing knee socks, at least when the weather was warm. Here there was some seasonality.

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Created: 2:31 PM 5/1/2025
Last updated: 2:41 AM 5/3/2025