Browsing by Author "Polenghi, Simonetta"

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    Educating the “New Man” in Italian Schools during the Fascist Era. Children’s Education through Traditional and Totalitarian Models in Images and Texts of Schoolbooks
    (Národní pedagogické muzeum a knihovna J. A. Komenského, ) Polenghi, Simonetta; Technická univerzita v Liberci
    Educating the “New Man” in Italian Schools during the Fascist Era. Children’s Education through Traditional and Totalitarian Models in Images and Texts of Schoolbooks Fascism used different tools and media to educate Italians to be good Fascists, and to present the myth of the “new man”. This myth had a number of different nuances during the twenty years of the regime. The strong educational aim of Fascism pervaded the entire life of Italians and assigned great importance to the education of children and young people. Schools were therefore given a significant role in this process, which grew in intensity during the thirties, with the Empire and the conquest of Ethiopia. School textbooks, with their images, are relevant sources for examining this process. Thanks to the extensive work in revising school textbooks undertaken by the Commission, which had been established by the minister Giovanni Gentile in 1923 and was chaired by Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, only the best books, which included the notion of progressive education and a modern idea of the child, could be published. The search for “the Fascist book” then began, but it was only in 1930 that the State Fascist textbooks replaced by law the previous ones. Nonetheless, an examination of the text and images of various State textbooks reveals a complex mix of traditional educational messages, centred around the Catholic faith, patriotic values and il Duce’s exaltation. It has been noted that the “new man” was initially an anti- -liberal and subsequently a “mass-man” [uomo-massa], with no individual identity. Examination of the State textbooks, however, also reveals messages, which were sometimes contradictory (Christian peace and Fascist war, for example). The importance of the family, constantly underlined, undermined the “mass-man” messages. Traditional rural values coexisted with the spirit of modernization. This article shows how some Fascist educational messages were coherent with traditional ones, and were therefore probably more easily accepted, whereas others were typically Fascist; and how the image of the new child changed.
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    Improving Children’s Health. Hygiene, Medicine and Pedagogy in the Italian School-medical Service and the Case of Milan (1950–1970)
    (Národní pedagogické muzeum a knihovna J. A. Komenského, ) Polenghi, Simonetta; Technická univerzita v Liberci
    In 1910, Italy’s General Healthcare Law set out plans for a school-medical service but limited it to the prevention of infectious diseases. It was only in 1961, three years after the establishment of the Ministry of Health, that the school-medical service was founded with a wider remit. The full implementation of the decree came in 1967 when the regulations were issued. This delay by the state was counterbalanced in Milan by the intense activity of the City Health Department. The capital of the economic boom in the 1950s and ‘60s, Milan had two mayors who were doctors, a long tradition of care for children and schools, and a wide network of doctors involved in social medicine. The aim of this paper is to show how in Milan in the 1950s and ‘60s, children’s physical condition was the subject of intense interest as a result of campaigns that linked hygiene, medicine and pedagogy to improve children’s health.
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    ISCHE 43 Milan. Histories of Educational Technologies. Cultural and Social Dimensions of Pedagogical Objects. Aims and Results
    (Národní pedagogické muzeum a knihovna J. A. Komenského, ) Polenghi, Simonetta; Debè, Anna; Technická univerzita v Liberci
    Simonetta Polenghi is full professor of History of education at the Catholic Univesity of the Sacred Heart, Milan. Her research focuses on history of school and pedagogy, history of university, history of special education between the 18th and 20th century. simonetta.polenghi@unicatt.it
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