MICHEL OSTENC

L'educazione nazionale in Italia nel primo dopoguerra (1919-1923)

N. 183

Summary — The author examines the contribution of those antipositivist intellectuals who, from the turn of the century, but above all after the first world war, made proposals for the reform of schools based on a plan for a form of " national education ". Particular consideration is given to the positions of the philosopher Giovanni Gentile and his pupils Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and Ernesto Codignola. Gentile’s idealism defended the individual’s freedom to educate himself, not in line with the eighteenth century rationalist model, but with the aim of bringing individuals together in a superior spiritual process. The state represented the original form of the national conscience. Given the inadequacy of the liberal ruling class, Gentile held that the radical renewal of the schools must be the first national duty for an Italy that had been regenerated by world war. The author also analyses the attempts at reform of the schools made by the post-war Ministries of Public Education, Croce (1920), Orso Corbino (1921), Anile (1922), and finally concentrates on the political-pedagogic perspective behind Gentile’s law of 1923.