Giuseppe Lombardo Radice in the early 20th century: A rediscovery of his pedagogy 3631882866, 9783631882863

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Giuseppe Lombardo Radice (1879-1938) was one of the main figures in Italian pedagogy in the first half of the 20th century and collaborated with the philosopher Giovanni Gentile on the 1923 reform of the Italian school system. However, his work ‘for’ and ‘with’ many elementary school teachers also left important and long-lasting traces beyond Italy’s borders, in Switzerland, Spain, Central Europe, and the North Adriatic, thanks to his intense international contacts with several scholars, foremost among them Adolphe Ferrière and Lorenzo Luzuriaga. A rediscovery of Lombardo Radice will open up new research avenues in different fields of the History of Education, History of Elementary Schools, and History of Teacher Education, because his original thinking about the primacy of the educational relationship between teacher and pupils, a new concept of school discipline and his idea of the scuola serena also accorded him a unique role in the international movement of New School Education. Moreover, his research among previously unknown popular elementary schools in Italy and the Italian-speaking Tessin region in Switzerland adopted a heuristic perspective, comparable to current studies on the material culture of schools.

Evelina Scaglia is Associate Professor of History of Education in the Department of Human and Social Sciences at the University of Bergamo (Italy).

Evelina Scaglia (ed.) · Giuseppe Lombardo Radice in the early 20th century: a rediscovery of his pedagogy

16

Evelina Scaglia (ed.)

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice in the early 20th century Positionen, Widersprüche, Utopien

Erziehung in Wissenschaft und Praxis Herausgegeben von Johanna Hopfner und Claudia Stöckl

Band 16

ISBN 978-3-631-88286-3

www.peterlang.com

ERWP_16_288286_Scaglia_ME_A5HC 151x214 globalL.indd Benutzerdefiniert H

16.03.23 05:25

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice (1879-1938) was one of the main figures in Italian pedagogy in the first half of the 20th century and collaborated with the philosopher Giovanni Gentile on the 1923 reform of the Italian school system. However, his work ‘for’ and ‘with’ many elementary school teachers also left important and long-lasting traces beyond Italy’s borders, in Switzerland, Spain, Central Europe, and the North Adriatic, thanks to his intense international contacts with several scholars, foremost among them Adolphe Ferrière and Lorenzo Luzuriaga. A rediscovery of Lombardo Radice will open up new research avenues in different fields of the History of Education, History of Elementary Schools, and History of Teacher Education, because his original thinking about the primacy of the educational relationship between teacher and pupils, a new concept of school discipline and his idea of the scuola serena also accorded him a unique role in the international movement of New School Education. Moreover, his research among previously unknown popular elementary schools in Italy and the Italian-speaking Tessin region in Switzerland adopted a heuristic perspective, comparable to current studies on the material culture of schools.

Evelina Scaglia is Associate Professor of History of Education in the Department of Human and Social Sciences at the University of Bergamo (Italy).

Evelina Scaglia (ed.) · Giuseppe Lombardo Radice in the early 20th century: a rediscovery of his pedagogy

16

Evelina Scaglia (ed.)

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice in the early 20th century Positionen, Widersprüche, Utopien

Erziehung in Wissenschaft und Praxis Herausgegeben von Johanna Hopfner und Claudia Stöckl

Band 16

ISBN 978-3-631-88286-3

www.peterlang.com

ERWP_16_288286_Scaglia_ME_A5HC 151x214 globalL.indd Benutzerdefiniert H

16.03.23 05:25

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice in the early 20th century

ERZIEHUNG IN WISSENSCHAFT UND PRAXIS Herausgegeben von Johanna Hopfner und Claudia Stöckl

BAND 16

Evelina Scaglia (ed.)

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice in the early 20th century A rediscovery of his pedagogy

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar.

ISSN 1861-9770 ISBN 978-3-631-88286-3 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-631-89586-3 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-89587-0 (EPUB) DOI 10.3726/b20519 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2023 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Peter Lang Edition ist ein Imprint der Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Berlin · Bruxelles · Lausanne · New York · Oxford Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Dieses Buch erscheint in der Peter Lang Edition und wurde vor Erscheinen peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

Table of Contents Evelina Scaglia Introduction. The reasons for a rediscovery ............................................................ 7

Section 1  The Italian Context ......................................................................  21 Lorenzo Cantatore The education of children in the Lombardo Radice household .......................................................................  23 Brunella Serpe Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and the National Association for the Interests of the Italian Mezzogiorno (1910–​1938) ...............................................  37 Juri Meda The political persecution of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice by the fascist regime (1924–​1931) .................................................................................................  51 Paolo Alfieri Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and physical education in elementary schools ...  67 Andrea Dessardo Giuseppe Lombardo Radice anti-​Montessorian ..................................................  81 Giuseppe Zago The figure of the elementary teacher and headmaster in the thought of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice ....................................................................................  95

Section 2  The European Context .............................................................  109 Yasmina Álvarez-​González Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and his reception in Spain in the first third of the 20th century .................................................................................................  111 Gabriella D’Aprile

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Table of Contents

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice –​Adolphe Ferrière. The contentious Swiss-​ Italian relationship and their disputes regarding New Education ...................  123 Evelina Scaglia Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and the teachers’ network in Tessin: Tracing an ‘educational-​cultural transfer’ through the pages of L’educatore della Svizzera italiana ......................................................................................................  135 Andrea Dessardo Central European influences on Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s concept of ‘national education’: His relations with Italian teachers in Austria-​Hungary . 149

About the Authors ...........................................................................................  163 Name index .........................................................................................................  167

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Introduction. The reasons for a rediscovery In keeping with the epistemological and methodological challenges addressed by the most recent studies in the historical-​educational sphere (Popkewitz 2013; Droux/​Hofstetter 2014; Zago/​Canales 2021), the aim of this volume is to explore the cornerstones of the theoretical thought and didactic proposals of the Italian pedagogist Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, by examining some of the significant biographical junctures in his life and considering the resonance of his work, both direct and indirect, beyond Italy’s borders. In this perspective, it may be useful to emphasise the heuristic value of biography that lies inherent in the possibility of reconstructing the history of the personal relationships and scientific correspondences of a given author and the intertwining, in the course of their life, of personally formative dimensions with those of culture and pedagogical commitment (De Giorgi 2009; Zago 2016). Within the framework of the renewal that the New Education Movement he-​ ralded at the beginning of the 20th century, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice represented an example of a multifaceted intellectual, who was capable of playing the dual role of schoolteacher and academic scholar animated by a reflectiveness that was characterised by a delicate balance between theory and praxis, such that he became one of the key figures in the European history of education and schooling. As a result of these particular features, the rediscovery of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice could also serve to implement the initial and in-​service training of teachers, especially primary school teachers, in accordance with some of the latest methodological advancements in the History of Education (Herbst 1999; Depaepe 2001). As stated by Simonetta Polenghi and Gianfranco Bandini: ‘one of the aspects of great interest concerns the close relationship of the History of Education with teacher training: instructors, secondary school teachers, educators. The discipline was formed having recognised the benefits of the History of Education for training, and –​in some cases –​through the recruitment of a very large teaching body which requires information on its history and on the regulatory and policy matters by which it was governed’ (Polenghi/​Bandini 2016, p. 4). As pointed out by Adolphe Ferrière in a contribution that made Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s work known to a wider international audience from 1928 onwards, the Sicilian pedagogist had become the interpreter of one of the most

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meaningful traits of the educational renewal of the early 20th century, namely the promotion and dissemination of activities carried out personally by thousands of little-​known teachers who were interested in implementing active methods within communal schools, that focused on the spontaneity and free initiative of their pupils (Ferrière 1928, pp. 115-​116; Chiosso 2023, pp. 73-​163). Nowadays, a revaluation of his thought and main scientific network could represent an added value for studies of the History of Education and their relationship with an improved teacher training.

The first steps of the young Giuseppe Lombardo Radice Born on 24 June 1879 in Catania, a city on the island of Sicily in Southern Italy, and recorded in the registry office on 28 June, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice rightfully belonged to that generation of young Italians born in the 1880s, who experienced the disquiet of not having been able to participate in the Italian Risorgimento, leading them to choose a militant intellectual commitment (Chios-​ so 1983, 2019). Since childhood and adolescence, he had begun to perceive, as a result of various experiences, the nature of education as a concrete problem: he became a guide in the play and studies of his peers, who like himself lived near the port of Messina, the Sicilian city to which his family had moved for his father’s work; he acted as older brother to his five cousins who had been orphaned by the death of their mother Nicolina; he was a model student in the local classical high school, where teachers and students joined together in happy attempts at active education and a rediscovery of the popular culture (Lombardo Radice 1927, pp. 67–​70). Like many young men of good hopes at that time, he aspired to being admitted as an internal student to the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, one of the academic centres of Italian Neo-​idealism, a movement which was progressively spreading during the late 19th century crisis of Positivism. Arriving in Pisa in the 1896–​97 academic year, he trained with professors Amedeo Crivellucci, Alessandro D’Ancona and Donato Jaja, who were former teachers of his friend and fellow countryman Giovanni Gentile (Cavallera 1996, pp. 79–​89) and contributed to building in the Tuscan city a ‘coterie of young scholars living together in a true regime of freedom’, committed to formulating a perspective of philosophical, social, political and cultural renewal that would be capable of taking a leading role in tackling the challenges of the start of the new century (Turi 1995, pp. 3–​47). After an initial two years of university studies, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice obtained a degree in Literature and Philosophy in 1899, discussing

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a thesis entitled Uno storico italiano della Rivoluzione francese [An Italian Historian of the French Revolution], supervised by Amedeo Crivellucci. In 1901, he earned a Master’s degree in Philosophy at the Royal University of Pisa, with a thesis supervised by Donato Jaja, entitled Formazione e sviluppo della teoria delle idee [Formation and Development of the Theory of Ideas], for which he obtained ‘full marks and honours’. His first experiences as a tutor and, later, in Firenze as a teacher between 1901 and 1902 at the Catholic private boarding school ‘Le Querce’ run by the Barnabite fathers, as well as in 1902 as a volunteer educator in his free time at the ‘Collegio degli orfani dei marinai’ (a boarding school for sailors’ orphans), prompted him to begin formulating pedagogical reflections on the relationship between freedom and responsibility, and the continuity of educational activity between school and family, taking as his point of reference the ideas outlined by his friend Giovanni Gentile in his essay Del concetto scientifico di pedagogia [On the Scientific Concept of Pedagogy, 1900], with which the birth of pedagogical Actualism is usually identified (Lombardo Radice 1927, pp. 74–​76). Having completed his postgraduate studies in Firenze and obtained his diploma in Philosophy with ‘full marks and honours’ at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa in 1903, he began to work in the school sector. For two years he was a substitute teacher of Italian and Latin in the first class of the ginnasio [middle school], first at Adernò in the province of Catania (1903–​1904), then at Arpino in the province of Frosinone (1904–​1905). Having attained a tenured teaching post in Pedagogy in the scuole normali [schools for the initial training of elementary teachers] through the competitive selection process, he wandered like so many other young teachers from one city to another, moving from Foggia (1905–​1906) to Palermo (1906–​1907 and 1907–​1908), and then to Messina for just a few months in 1908, because of a terrible earthquake. He was transferred to Catania, where he taught until 1911 (Lombardo Radice 1927, pp. 78–​81). With his students he introduced a personal and free way of working that emphasised how much he himself had learnt his ‘first pedagogy’ above all from life and school, forming his own pedagogical conscience through constant reflection on educational experiences (Lombardo Radice 1927, p. 79; Picco 1951, pp. 9–​14; Catalfamo 1958, p. 9). This trait of originality, which characterised his thought over the decades, found a further source of enrichment in his participation, alongside Giovanni Gentile (at that time a professor at the Royal University of Palermo) and in alliance with Gaetano Salvemini, in the activities of the newly founded Federazione Nazionale Insegnanti Scuola Media [FNISM:  National Federation of Middle and High School Teachers], promoting a moral battle in

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middle and high schools for the renewal of Italian culture and the civil rehabilitation of the nation (Turi 1995, p. 166). It was at this historical juncture, dominated by criticism of Giovanni Giolitti’s government and the polemic against Freemasonry, that Lombardo Radice had the idea of establishing a journal that would act as a ‘banner of educational reform’ under the title Nuovi Doveri [New Duties], with the aim of addressing school problems –​i.e. the formative nature of middle schools, the emancipation of the working classes, secular schools, private school initiatives –​as a ‘national question’ (Lombardo Radice 1907, pp. 6–​7). The experience gained through Nuovi Doveri was soon flanked by another area of cultural commitment, coinciding with scholastic-​educational publications, which saw the launch in 1908 of Sandron Publishing House’s series Studi pedagogici. Collezione dei Nuovi Doveri [Pedagogical Studies. Collection of the New Duties] and in 1910 of a second series entitled Pedagogisti ed educatori antichi e moderni [Pedagogists and Ancient and Modern Educators], which included historical-​educational studies and classics of European pedagogical thought such as Comenius’s Didattica Magna [Great Didactics] that were still little-​known in Italy (Chiosso 2014, pp. 216–​220). On 22 September 1910, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice married Gemma Harasim in the setting of Fiume (a city in present-​day Croatia, then under Austro-​ Hungarian rule). They would go on to have three children: Giuseppina (1911), Laura (1913) and Lucio (1916). Gemma proved to be one of her husband’s most influential collaborators (Cantatore 2022, pp. 7–​35) and played a mediating role with the pedagogical culture of Central Europe and the North Adriatic region, which was particularly appreciated by Giuseppe. The following year marked an important turning point in Lombardo Radice’s career: he published Il concetto dell’educazione e le leggi della formazione spirituale: saggio di pedagogia filosofica [The Concept of Education and the Spiritual Formation’s Laws:  Essay of Philosophical Pedagogy] with Sandron Publishing House and came first in the competition for the chair of Pedagogy at the Royal University of Catania, thanks to the support of his friend Giovanni Gentile (Romano 1984, p. 128). The early closure in 1911 of the Nuovi Doveri, partly caused by an exacerbation of the internal struggles between the various currents of the FNISM, soon saw him engaged in the project of a new periodical entitled Rassegna di Pedagogia e di Politica scolastica [Review of Pedagogy and School Policy], also published by Sandron in the years 1912–​1913 with the aim of promoting better training for the new generation of elementary and secondary teachers (Pillera 2021, pp. 146–​ 178). Together with his friend Giuseppe Prezzolini, he was, at the same time,

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involved in sponsoring the pedagogical and cultural project of the teachers’ magazine La nostra scuola [Our School], founded in Milano in 1913 by Angelo Colombo, Gian Cesare Pico and Vincenzo Cento. This served as an expression of a new vision of the school and the work of elementary school teachers, recognising them in their role of educators, in a philosophy that was far removed from that formulated by the pedagogy of both late Positivism and Herbartism. This same commitment was also expressed in the opening of the Scuola e vita [School and Life] series at the Francesco Battiato Publishing House in Catania (Chiosso 2014, pp. 221–​227). In the three-​year period 1913–​1916, through the triptych of volumes Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale  –​ Come si uccidono le anime  –​ L’ideale educativo e la scuola nazionale [Lessons in Didactics and Memoirs of Teaching Life  –​How to Kill Souls  –​The Educational Ideal and the National School], Giuseppe Lombardo Radice promoted the foundations of a new idea of pedagogy that was centred on the educational relationship between teacher and pupil, closely linked to a theory of the school as a ‘riforma in cammino’ [reform on the way] and a democratic conception of the nation (Charnitzky 2001, pp. 91–​191; Chiosso 2019, pp. 233–​255).

Between public involvement and the discovery of new borders of educational research The First World War represented for Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and many other Italian intellectuals a ‘testing ground’ for the formation of a unitary national consciousness, in the name of those nationalistic and interventionist ideals that had been animating them at that time, but these were soon disregarded as a result of historical events. Lombardo Radice’s involvement in the surveillance, assistance, and propaganda service for Italian troops (better known as the ‘P’ service) after the heavy defeat suffered by the Italian army at the battle of Caporetto on 12 November 1917 proved fundamental to him (Turi 1995, pp. 291–​292). At the end of the conflict, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice reinvigorated the cultural and political battle, alongside Giovanni Gentile, in favour of the imperative need to reform the national school system in the name of a renewed conception of education and culture. He supported innovative organisations such as the Gruppo d’azione per le scuole del popolo [Action Group for the People’s Schools] in Milano, which arose from the milieu of the teachers and educationalists that gathered around the magazine La nostra scuola, and the Fascio di educazione nazionale [Group of National Education], founded by Giovanni Gentile and Ernesto Codignola between 1919 and 1920. Also in 1919, he opened a new pedagogical

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journal at the Società anonima editrice La Voce Publishing House, with the title of L’educazione nazionale [National Education], to serve as a ‘linking paper’ between the various elementary school teachers’ militant experiences, and to promote the spread of a new pedagogical culture and a more intense spiritual life for teachers, in response to post-​war problems, including those of the schools in the ‘redeemed lands’ of Trento and Trieste (Chiosso 2019, pp. 136–​138). The turning point of the 1920s saw Giuseppe Lombardo Radice gradually abandon an idea of the school as a ‘product of national culture’ in favour of the scuola serena [serene school], that is a ‘school-​life’ animated by the ideals of the good, the beautiful, and the true. In his proposal, he had in mind, as examples of exceptional scuole serene, the Montesca school opened in 1901–​1902 on the estate of Baron and Baroness Leopoldo and Alice Franchetti in Città di Castello (Umbria) and the school at Muzzano (Tessin, Switzerland), where the teacher Maria Boschetti Alberti worked from 1910 to 1924 (Montecchi 2009). He decided, not without inner dilemma, to respond affirmatively to the call from the newly appointed Minister of Public Education Giovanni Gentile to hold the role of Direttore generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare [General Director of Elementary and Popular Education] in the first fascist government led by Benito Mussolini after the March on Roma, thus having the opportunity to offer a solution to the historical need for the unification of the national cultural tradition and to give life to his idea of school and teaching reform (Turi 1995, p. 323). He drew up new Programmi per l’istruzione elementare [Programmes for Elementary Education 1923], characterised by an educational orientation that was respectful of the child’s nature, capable of overcoming the gap between school and the child’s living environment, and based on disciplines such as language, art, music, and physical education. To further promote these new pedagogical principles, between 1922 and 1926 Lombardo Radice published several texts supporting the reform, aimed primarily at teachers, such as Nuovi saggi di propaganda pedagogica [New Essays of Pedagogical Propaganda, Paravia 1922], Educazione e diseducazione [Education and Diseducation, Bemporad 1923], Accanto ai maestri:  nuovi saggi di propaganda pedagogica [Behind the Elementary School Teachers:  New Essays of Pedagogical Propaganda, Paravia 1925], La riforma della scuola elementare: vita nuova della scuola del popolo [The Reform of Elementary School: New Life of the Popular School, Sandron 1925], and Scuole, maestri e libri:  raccolta di indagini essenziali [Schools, Elementary School Teachers and Books: a Collection of Essential Researches 1926] (Chiosso 2019, pp. 139–​153). The two-​year period 1924–​1925 represented a difficult ‘watershed’ in Lombardo Radice’s biography, which would mark a second ‘season’ of his life and

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work. His decision to give up the position of Direttore generale, although not understood by Gentile, did not diminish the mutual esteem between the two. The situation, however, was different among the Fascist political leadership:  Lombardo Radice became the object of a denigrating campaign by the regime’s publicists. Finding himself increasingly marginalised both by the neo-​idealist milieu from which he came and by the fascist intellectuals, Lombardo Radice saw his choice not as a moment of withdrawal into himself, but as an opportunity to initiate even more pedagogical scientific reflections and research, and to clarify the pedagogical and didactic motives of the reform, including beyond Italy’s borders (Chiosso 2023, pp. 112-​135). He was able to do this thanks to his university teaching activities at the Istituto Superiore di Magistero in Roma –​to which he had been assigned in the autumn of 1923, after his first formal assignment in Pisa –​and to his resumption of the editorship of L’educazione nazionale, which had been temporarily entrusted to Ugo Spirito during his tenure as Direttore generale. Studying the documenti umani [human documents], such as the drawings, poems, and notebooks of pupils collected in the scuole serene he visited, allowed him to create a veritable archivio didattico [didactic archive] rich in a variety of school materials, as sources from which to renew his activities in critica didattica [critical-​reflexive studies]. Some of these documents, referring to Italian or Tessin experiences of scuole serene, were presented in the volume Athena fanciulla. Scienza e poesia della scuola serena [Child Athena. Science and Poetry of the Serene School], published in 1925 by the Bemporad publishing house in Firenze (Cives 1983, pp. 97–​162). His situation of progressive isolation at a national level did not prevent Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, at least initially, from intervening actively in new international cultural horizons, thanks to his friendship with the Swiss pedagogist Adolphe Ferrière –​it should be remembered that Lombardo Radice was a member of the International Committee of LIEN (Ligue Internationale pour l’Éducation Nouvelle) –​and his increasingly assiduous correspondence with the Tessin elementary teachers’ networks. Both experiences enabled him to enliven his work in searching for the reasons for an authentically ‘educative’ pedagogy and theory of schooling, investigating the ‘fissures’ in the educational relationship and making known the efforts of the ‘often intuitively ingenious didactics’ realised by unknown teachers, who belonged to a sort of corporation des silencieux (Tomarchio 2021, p. 217). In the period between the Italian State-​Catholic Church Conciliation and the beginning of the 1930s, however, the Sicilian pedagogist’s personal life became increasingly marked by restlessness, loneliness and ‘cultural’ marginalisation; in

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order not to give up on training new generations of teachers and to fight the spread of Fascist culture in schools and the university system with his research activities, he decided to set aside his conscience and take the oath of allegiance to Fascism as provided for by the Royal Decree of 28 August 1931, so as not to lose his university chair. In the spring of 1933, he was notified of a warning issued by the prefect of Roma due to the alleged failure of the journal L’educazione nazionale to systematically adhere to and glorify the fascist regime, which resulted in the immediate cessation of its publication. He was also subject to a possible dismissal from his teaching post, which fortunately did not happen (Cives 1968, pp. 35–​36). Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s last published volume, entitled Pedagogia di apostoli e di operai [Pedagogy of Apostles and Artisans], came out in 1936 on his return from Tessin, where he had continued to find inspiration in his educational passion but also in his institutional commitment, despite the totalitarian turn of the fascist regime in Italy (De Felice 1981). His life came to an abrupt end on 16 August 1938, during an ascent to the Croda da Lago refuge in Cortina d’Ampezzo (Belluno) in the company of his wife Gemma.

The aim and structure of the book This book is composed of 10 chapters, which are the result of the research of 9 scholars from as many European universities. The various contributions are linked by the common thread of the conviction that it was a scientific and moral duty for Giuseppe Lombardo Radice to prove his pedagogical ideas by visiting schools directly or indirectly, including outside the Kingdom of Italy, and to carry out a critical-​reflexive study of the materials produced by pupils with their teachers. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice was a prominent European example of a school explorer, a builder of national and international networks of cooperation between teachers and a disseminator of the innovations of new education in communal schools. He had made his profession as a sort of mission, called upon to highlight the work of the ‘humble ones who make the school’, ‘silently create the new didactic tradition’ and ‘really live with the children’; in other words, he oversaw the making of the history of the ‘school in action’ (Lombardo Radice 1928, p. XIV). The first section of the book, entitled The Italian Context, includes essays on unknown aspects of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s biography and works in Italy from 1910 to 1930, to rediscover the originality of his figure in a complex histo-​ rical period that was marked by the end of the Italian liberal state and the advent of the Fascist regime.

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The paper by Lorenzo Cantatore, The education of children in the Lombardo Radice household, provides a reconstruction of the domestic environment of Lombardo Radice’s family in Catania, as a pedagogical laboratory in which Giuseppe and his wife Gemma trialled the most effective and original ideas and didactic practices with their three children Giuseppina, Laura and Lucio. The correspondence between the two spouses and a re-​reading of the most important of Lombardo Radice’s works have revealed Gemma’s prominent role, her genial educational strategies, and the active participation of all three children in the formulation of a pedagogy as ‘work in progress’. The contribution of Brunella Serpe, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and the National Association for the Interests of the Italian Mezzogiorno (1910–​1938), focusses on a reconstruction of the key role of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice in the ANIMI-​Associazione Italiana per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno [National Association for the Interests of the Italian Mezzogiorno], thanks to his commitment in the remotest places and communities to the struggle against illiteracy and the promotion of the social and cultural emancipation of the Italian South though popular education and school, in a wide-​ranging life commitment of activity. The collaboration with ANIMI represented, for Lombardo Radice, an opportunity to reflect on the teaching culture of the first decade of the 20th century and, in addition, to promote a new training of teachers. Juri Meda, in his intervention The political persecution of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice by the fascist regime (1924–​1931), concentrates  –​through the study of unpublished correspondences and other archival documents –​on a less investigated period of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s life, exploring the difficulties he experienced after leaving the role of Direttore generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare during Benito Mussolini’s first government. He was the object of strict political surveillance by the fascist police. Despite experiencing apprehension at his personal condition, Lombardo Radice did not give up his liberty and the desire to implement his international scientific and didactic exchanges, especially with Swiss teachers and scholars. Paolo Alfieri’s paper, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and physical education in ele-​ mentary schools, deals with the original role accorded by Giuseppe Lombardo Radice to physical education in the debate around this discipline in Italian elementary schools. Lombardo Radice offered –​especially in his volume Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale –​an innovative contribution in terms of pedagogical theory and teaching methodology. He introduced a ludic orientation of physical education, called ‘conscious play’, in which valuing the ludic dimension was linked to self-​education, in contrast to the typical educational practices of Positivism.

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Andrea Dessardo, in his contribution entitled Giuseppe Lombardo Radice anti-​Montessorian, focusses on a less investigated aspect of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s intellectual and pedagogical profile, concerning his role as the ‘main detractor’ of Maria Montessori’s thought in 1926 on the occasion of the publication of the third edition of her Metodo della pedagogia scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei bambini. The distance between the two Italian scholars was due not only to different pedagogical conceptions, but mainly to political and ideological reasons. The interpretation formulated by Dessardo is based both on a re-​reading of the principal interventions published in that period by Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and on his correspondence with the Tessin elementary teacher Maria Boschetti Alberti. The paper by Giuseppe Zago, The figure of the elementary teacher and headmaster in the thought of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, reconstructs the figures of the elementary school teacher and the headmaster in the main works of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, in the light of a recent field in the History of Education concerning the study of school memories. The elementary teacher was portrayed by the Sicilian pedagogist like a ‘missionary’ or ‘lay priest’, who dedicates his life to the cultural and moral elevation of his pupils, especially those from lower-​class families. The headmaster was represented like a ‘father’ or, rather, a ‘master’ of the teachers in his school. The second section of the book focuses on The European Context and examines the reception of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s thought in several territories: Switzerland, Spain, Central Europe, and the North Adriatic region. Yasmina Álvarez-​González, in her contribution entitled Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and his reception in Spain in the first third of the 20th century, deals with the reception of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s thought in Spain in the first decades of the 20th century, giving particular attention to the publication of some of his works in the Spanish language and how he had become an important pedagogical figure. Lombardo Radice’s introduction in Spain was driven by an important figure in the period’s pedagogical establishment, Lorenzo Luzuriaga, who, like the Italian pedagogist, was a member of the International Committee of the International League of New Education. They shared the same positions and Luzuriaga’s journal Revista de Pedagogía became a twin publication with that published in Italy under Lombardo Radice, L’educazione nazionale. Gabriella D’Aprile, in her paper entitled Giuseppe Lombardo Radice  –​ Adolphe Ferrière. The contentious Swiss-​ Italian relationship and their disputes regarding New Education, concentrates on the collaboration between the Italian scholar and one of the main protagonists of the International New Education Movement. The reconstruction of this scientific,

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intellectual, and editorial relationship, including through the analysis of an unpublished correspondence, offers the opportunity to discover issues, convergences, and events that have remained unexplored for many decades. In particular, she focusses on the role of both pedagogists in promoting the edu-​ cational and didactic work of teachers, headmasters, educators, and other unknown figures, which had contributed to a widespread realisation of the principles of the New Education Movement in communal schools. Evelina Scaglia, in her intervention on Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and the teachers’ network in Tessin:  Tracing an ‘educational-​cultural transfer’ through the pages of L’educatore della Svizzera italiana, focusses on the educational and scientific exchanges between the Italian scholar and a group of Tessin elementary teachers, starting from an analysis of certain articles published by the Swiss journal L’educatore della Svizzera italiana. The main areas of pedagogical and didactic comparison can be identified in the positive evaluation of the local experiences of scuole serene, in which Lombardo Radice found a realisation of his innovative idea of elementary school, and in the spread of the Pasquali-​Agazzi Method as a pedagogical perspective most suited to the consolidation of pre-​ school education in Tessin, in opposition to the Montessori Method. Andrea Dessardo, in the last chapter Central European influences on Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s concept of ‘national education’:  His relations with Italian teachers in Austria-​Hungary, sets out to explore the influence exerted by knowledge of the Central European and North Adriatic worlds, mediated by his wife Gemma Harasim, on Lombardo Radice’s ideas on national education, school reform and socialism. An analysis of the journal L’educazione nazionale has revealed, especially in the early years, the space dedicated to the voices of the schools of Venezia Giulia, who were enthusiastic about the cultural and pedagogical horizons opened by neo-​idealism in contrast with the Herbartism with which the Habsburg teachers’ culture was imbued. Lombardo Radice seriously considered the option of reforming the Italian school by grafting together the national pedagogical culture, revitalised by Neo-​idealism, with the Habsburg traditions of the Trieste school, but he internalised the weaknesses and neuroses of those territories affected by a wider cultural and political crisis.

Printed sources G.L.R. (1907): Riforma di scuola, o riforma d’insegnanti? In: Nuovi Doveri 1(1), pp.  6–​7. Lombardo Radice, G. (1927): Lettera alla Signorina Rotten. In Lombardo Radice, G. (ed.): Saggi di critica didattica. Torino, pp. 65–​93.

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Lombardo Radice, G. (1928): Dal mio archivio didattico –​Il maestro esploratore, II supplemento a «L’educazione nazionale». Roma.

References Cantatore, L. (2022):  Introduzione. La «signora Didattica» dei Lombardo-​ Radice. In: Lombardo Radice, G.: Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale, secondo la prima edizione del 1913, introd. e cura di L. Cantatore. Roma, pp. 7–​35. Catalfamo, G. (1958): Lombardo Radice. Brescia (last edition 1973). Cavallera, H.A. (1996): Due amici siciliani. In Cavallera, H.A. (ed.): Riflessione e azione formativa: l’attualismo di Giovanni Gentile. Roma, pp. 79–​89. Charnitzky, J. (2001): Fascismo e scuola. La politica scolastica del regime (1922–​ 1943). Firenze (Original edition: Die Schulpolitik des faschistischen Regimes in Italien (1922–​1943). Tübingen, 1994). Chiosso, G. (1983):  L’educazione nazionale da Giolitti al primo dopoguerra. Brescia. Chiosso, G. (2014). L’editoria pedagogica nel primo Novecento. Le collane dirette da Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. In Fava, S. (ed.): … Il resto vi sarà dato in aggiunta. Studi in onore di Renata Lollo. Milano, pp. 209–​232. Chiosso, G. (2019):  L’educazione degli italiani:  laicità, progresso e nazione nel primo Novecento. Bologna. Chiosso, G. (2023): Il fascismo e i maestri. Milano. Cives, G. (1968): ‘L’educazione nazionale’ (seconda serie: 1924–​1933). In: Riforma della scuola 14(8–​9), pp. 41–​50. Cives, G. (1983): Attivismo e antifascismo in Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. «Critica didattica» o «didattica critica»?. Firenze. De Felice, R. (1981): Mussolini il duce, vol. II: Lo stato totalitario, 1936–​1940. Torino. De Giorgi, F. (2009): Biografia e storia dell’educazione. Un sintomo di crisi storiografica o una chance?. In: Pedagogia e Vita 7(3–​4), pp. 207–​216. Depaepe, M. (2001):  A professionally relevant history of education for teachers: Does it exist? reply to Herbst’s the state of the art article. In: Paedagogica Historica 37(3), pp. 631–​640. Droux, J./​Hofstetter, R. (2014):  Going international:  The history of education stepping beyond borders. In: Paedagogica Historica 50(1–​2), pp. 1–​9. Ferrière, A. (1928):  Trois pionniers de l’éducation nouvelle. Hermann Lietz, Giuseppe Lombardo-​Radice, Frantisek Bakule. Paris.

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Herbst, J. (1999):  The history of education:  State of the art at the turn of the century in Europe and North America. In: Paedagogica Historica 35(3), pp. 737–​747. Montecchi, L. (2009):  Alle origini della scuola serena. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e la cultura pedagogica italiana del primo Novecento di fronte al mito della scuola della Montesca. In: History of Education & Children’s Literature 4(2), pp. 307–​337. Picco, I. (1951): Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. Firenze. Pillera, G.C. (2021):  Nutrire l’anima del maestro. La «Rassegna di pedagogia e di Politica scolastica» (1912–​1913). In:  Scaglia, E. (ed.):  Una pedagogia dell’ascesa. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e il suo tempo. Roma, pp. 146–​178. Polenghi, S./​Bandini, G. (2016): The history of education in its own light: Signs of crisis, potential for growth. In: Espacio, Tiempo y Educación 3(1), pp. 3–​20. Popkewitz, T.S. (2013): Styles of reason: Historicism, historicizing, and the hi-​ story of education. In: Popkewitz, T.S. (ed.): Rethinking the history of education: Transnational perspectives on its questions, methods, and knowledge. New York, pp. 1–​28. Romano, S. (1984): Giovanni Gentile. La filosofia al potere. Milano. Tomarchio, M. (2021): Protagonista e testimone di rinnovamento pedagogico-​ didattico. In: Scaglia, E. (ed.): Una pedagogia dell’ascesa. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e il suo tempo. Roma, pp. 211–​218. Turi, G. (1995). Giovanni Gentile. Una biografia. Firenze (last edition 2006). Zago, G. (2016):  Biography in (Education) historiography. A brief sketch of a complex relationship. In: Espacio, Tiempo y Educación 3(1), pp. 203–​234. Zago, G./​Canales, A.F. (2021):  Gentile in Spain:  A historiographical mirage. In: History of Education & Children’s Literature 16(1), pp. 185–​210.

Section 1 The Italian Context

Lorenzo Cantatore

The education of children in the Lombardo Radice household Abstract

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice experimented with his pedagogical ideas and teaching me-​ thods firstly within his own home. Thanks to the authoritative collaboration of his wife Gemma Harasim, he was the first teacher of his three children: Giuseppina, Laura and Lucio. This family ‘pedagogical laboratory’ was at the basis of many of Lombardo Radice’s writings. His son Lucio, too, recalling his childhood experiences, testifies to the effectiveness of his parents’ educational practices, including from the perspective of his anti-​fascist education. Keywords: Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, Gemma Harasim, Lucio Lombardo Radice, anti-​ fascism, pedagogical laboratory

The pedagogical laboratory at Caronda street ‘As it grows up, the babbling little creature absorbs the thought of the family, in the commonality of life (and there is a family language that has no less characteristic signs than similar physiognomy and bearing in its various members), but imprints it on itself. With each child a new language is born in the home in a certain way, because a new spirit is born’ (Lombardo Radice 1961, p. 174)1. It is not inappropriate to recognise in this description the child’s first approach to the ‘family lexicon’, among the many that can be found in Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale, a beacon of domestic experience. Indeed, among the possible approaches to the Sicilian pedagogist’s thought and work, the one mediated through the aspect of family is in no way secondary. After all, it was he himself, together with his wife Gemma Harasim (1876–​1961), who celebrated and recorded for posterity the most significant documents and experiments from their personal pedagogical laboratory at 266 Caronda Street in Catania. Here, immediately after their marriage, the couple settled in 1910 and

1 Lombardo Radice 1961 reproduces the last edition of Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale (1936) edited according to the author’s last will.

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it was here that they raised their three children, Giuseppina (1911–​1970), Laura (1913–​2003) and Lucio (1916–​1982), until they finally moved to Roma in 19232. In those modest and decorous Sicilian rooms, following the birth of their first-​ born child, the ardour that Gemma, in particular, had already demonstrated in protecting ‘incorrect and almost stammering childish writing’ (Harasim 2009, p. 155) during her time as a militant teacher in Fiume, found a new field of activity. Engaged as they both were in the battle against schooling that was ‘always several years, if not decades, behind the complex and rapid movement of nations’ (ibid., p. 142), the Lombardo Radice couple experienced first-​hand what it meant to defend, in children’s initial education/​learning, the ‘human document’ (ibid., pp. 148, 151) against the pitfalls of a tired and lazy didactic habit that was based on ‘conventionalism, plagiarism, continuous imitation’ (ibid., p. 146) and the ‘precocious and impatient correction (produced by a lack of sympathy for the child) [...] that disturbs linguistic development’ (Lombardo Radice 1961, p. 317). With Giuseppina being born in Catania on 8 September 1911, it was during her first year of life that her father managed to find the intellectual, moral and emotional strength to complete the publishing project that became Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale, the book that would bring him fame and success. Gemma’s decisive role in the whole operation is indisputable, as revealed by the correspondence between the two. In particular, her letters flow with intimate and encouraging words, with which she acts as a fundamental and extraordinary advisor to her husband. A former elementary schoolteacher and now a mother engaged in the meticulous observation of Pipiza’s early development (the nickname for Giuseppina in the letters between her parents), Harasim spurs and stimulates her Peppino’s scientific productivity: ‘Don’t write to me much if you feel in the mood for work! Neglect me as well: I am not jealous of Mrs Didactics, on the contrary I love her along with you’ (Cantatore 2021, p. 101), or assures him of her practical collaboration, even in times of discouragement: ‘You are you, you are limpid, warm, faithful in all that you do: I will even add a proud word: we are, you and I, sincere; I want to prepare other notes for you: they will be nothing, in themselves perhaps, but I will put in them all my life as a school elementary teacher, all my soul, all my years of humble work, of serene enthusiasms: is it possible that all this is not valuable? You will add your culture, your thinking, your work over these years, your pure love for the school: our book must also be

2 For an overview of Lombardo Radice’s life see: Cambi 2005; Cantatore 2013; Harasim 2009; Borruso 2013; Scaglia 2021; ‘Cronache di una vita (1879–​1938)’ [Reports on a life (1879–​1938)].

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a beautiful thing, conceived with our beloved little creature in mind, do you remember? In that old house, in one of the first days of my suffering; don’t change your mind, you know: you will put the precise dedication, which was so imprecise then: do you remember everything?’ (Cantatore 2021, p. 102). ‘Don’t grieve for the Didattica: [we will have] a small extension still: we will do it for sure, very soon and well as soon as we are in good heart; in the meantime, you can tell Sandron that the work has progressed well enough; it’s not a big lie: I finished that chapter (35 pages) yesterday (well or badly?) and if I can, I’ll begin another today: when you get down to it, you’re like lightning and you’ll write quickly and straight away as soon as you feel happy: and on the terrace at Fiume every early morning, if you work for two hours, you can achieve miracles. ‒ In short, talk to Sandron, trust yourself; and be really confident and calm: I also want to help you: I will tell you all my thoughts from my years at the popular school, we will go over them together, the Didactics will be a beautiful and heartfelt thing indeed’ (ibid., p. 102). ‘I am well and I am glad to know you are healthy and quite courageous and willing to work with strength and joy: do not write to me much if you cannot; I do not complain! I always hear your thoughts around me: I breathe them; I am with you, always: leave to me the didactic chapter “arithmetic and geometry in the lower classes” ‒ and I will tell you more if I have time’ (ibid., p. 101). These are exceptionally interesting testimonies, from which one can see the complementary role that the wife plays in relation to the husband, not only in the ménage of the family and in bringing up children, but also in his work. The naturalness with which Gemma offers her help in the drafting of the Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale suggests a habitual exchange between equals, and makes us reflect on the fact that at the origin of one of the most revolutionary books in early 20th century Italian pedagogy, lies an entirely innovative family and couple’s reality that is carried out in the total absence of barriers between daily childcare, conjugal affection, pedagogical experimentation and scientific production. When Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale finally arrived in bookshops in 1913, the dedication, dated 20 November 1912, confirmed the wish expressed by Gemma in her anticipatory letter of 4 November: ‘To my wife, Gemma Harasim, I offer the book I wrote almost with her soul, thinking of the education of our sweet creature, Giuseppina’ (Lombardo Radice 1913, p. 3)3.

3 In the 1934 edition, to that dedication (where ‘our sweet creature, Giuseppina’ will become ‘our first creature’) a further one will be added: ‘To Giuseppina, to Lauretta and

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From this dazzling beginning, important educational experiments would continue to take place in the rooms of Caronda street. I am thinking of those described and illustrated in Athena fanciulla. Scienza e poesia della scuola serena, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s, or rather the Lombardo Radice spouses’, most innovative contribution in certain respects, especially in terms of the sources used: ‘everything I have written and worked on has always been inspired by the experience of young people’s lives I have acquired, in the family and in school. [...] My home has been my main experimental field from 1911 to the present’ (Lombardo Radice 1927, pp. 66, 87). That the condition of fatherhood represented a fundamental state in the concept of the teacher formulated by Lombardo Radice and in his own personal and professional life, is something we find confirmation of in several passages of his work. We should recall, at least, his admiration of the Protestant theologian Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–​1638) who ‘believes that teachers who have their own children are the best of all, because they understand better how to treat pupils’ (Lombardo Radice 1969, p. 46), but also the opening pages of Lezioni di pedagogia generale, where he acknowledges how ‘even this new book, which stems from the need for pure theory, is nevertheless full of echoes of my life as a teacher and father’ (Lombardo Radice 1916, p. 5). A book born ‘in sad days’, Athena fanciulla marked a kind of ‘liberation’ for Lombardo Radice. The texts that compose it were assembled in 1924, in the terrible months of his decision to definitively distance himself from Fascism, resigning from his position as Direttore generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare (Meda 2021): ‘In these pages I have found myself again. Therefore, even if they are not much, they are still the best of my soul’ (Lombardo Radice 1925, p. [5]). It was, therefore, the inauguration of a new season of life, a rebirth that, not by chance, began with the critical study of children’s documents, writings, and drawings. At the centre of the book, alongside the children of Montesca, those of Muzzano, Pila and the mysterious Iònolusai, those of Lugano, Rinnovata school and the Roman countryside, are his ‘three city children, aged six to ten’ who were brought up, educated and instructed within the walls of the home, under the constant attention and regime of ‘disciplined freedom’ (Lombardo Radice 1983, pp. 18–​19) established, day after day, by Giuseppe and Gemma. In correspondence with his daughters and son, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice never failed to recognise the merits of the unquestionable educational success of his

to Lucio, who grew up good by virtue of her, who knew how to implement the ideas of this book in them’.

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wife: ‘But, my little rascals, the miracle is not yours, feel proud! The miracle is your mother’s, who is making you a “well-​constructed” little brain’ (Cantatore 2021, p. 104). The pages of Athena fanciulla. Scienza e poesia della scuola serena are very well-​known in the history of Italian pedagogy, where Lombardo Radice, thanks also to the space dedicated to his wife’s thought and writing (Harasim 1925), reaffirms through fieldwork his radical rejection of methodological dogmatisms, and offers a first concrete demonstration of his idea of critica didattica (Cives 1983) and of ‘pedagogy as a work in progress’ (Chiosso 2019, p. 140). The seemingly surprising choice to do everything himself through not sending his children to public schools demonstrates a profound coherence. It was an ethical-​moral position, as well as a cultural and political one, of great integrity, that fused together the dominant motives behind the intellectual stance, private and public, of these two great protagonists of the early 20th-​century debate on school reform. This decision demonstrated in fact the total assumption of their responsibilities as parents and teachers, as theorists and critics of the school-​ educational system, with respect to their desire to change the school, to their contesting of traditional and veteropositivist pedagogical methods, to their subversive faith in that profound change that would distinguish the adventure of the Gentile Reform and the new programmes written by Lombardo Radice in 1923. In his 1915 pamphlet against the so-​called ‘pedagogical Jesuitism’ (Lombardo Radice 2020), understood as an excessively regulatory and passive attitude of schools and teachers, Lombardo Radice had quoted the words of another father-​ teacher, his Bolognese friend Alberto Calderara (D’Ascenzo 2011), to clarify this unease and, ultimately, their choice to not send their children to school. In fact, Calderara’s concerns about his daughter’s first schooling summed up that ‘fear of school’ (Lombardo Radice 2020, p. 76) that was also Lombardo Radice’s and that was widespread in many intellectual families in the years of the sunset of the Liberal age, a distrust fuelled by the ‘systematic sterilisation that [school] carries out by treating pupils as a thing, and trampling on their souls’ (Lombardo Radice 2020, p. 73): ‘My little girl goes to school’, wrote the Bolognese elementary school teacher, ‘she has to go to school; and it is a fact that resonates in my as a father. Before, there were two of us to inspire her, to educate her: me and her mother; now a third person comes between us, perhaps before us: the elementary school teacher. And I become, believe it or not, jealous, doubtful, suspicious: I fear. Who loves and knows, fears’ (Lombardo Radice 2020, pp. 70–​71; Cantatore 2020). In light of these considerations, therefore, the decision to school his three children at home took on for the Lombardo Radice family the meaning of a cultural challenge and an urgent need to conduct research by experimenting with those ideas (in particular, with regard to children’s writing and drawing) that Giuseppe

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would transform into legal action through his collaboration with Gentile on the Reform and his drafting of the 1923 law:  ‘The teaching experience with these children, for several years, is of the kind that the programmes demand. “No composition on a theme”. The only outlet for their need for expression is to tell what interests them, if they feel like it. The whole cunning of the mother-​teacher lies in giving birth to the desire to recount in writing (letters to the distant aunt; letters to the soldier-​daddy; “let’s put this down on paper, as a souvenir: when you are older you will enjoy reading it”; other similar motivations to written exposition)’ (Lombardo Radice 1925, p. 67). Traces of this daily work with and by his children can be identified in the parallel correspondence between the parents and between the parents and their children (Cantatore 2021a, 2021b), at the time, but also in Lucio’s mature writings. From the latter, as we shall see in a moment, emerges clearly the extent to which his pedagogical, scientific and political beliefs were indebted to the intellectual model absorbed as a child in the pedagogical laboratory in Caronda street.

An anti-​fascist education It can be seen that Athena fanciulla. Scienza e poesia della scuola serena –​ which remains focused on little Lucio and his first writing exercises –​represents both a methodological and scientific turning point on the one hand, and an existential and political one on the other. From this point on, Lombardo Radice began to systematically use original documentation: children’s notebooks, teachers’ diaries, the so-​called tesoro [treasure] (Lombardo Radice 1925, p. 431; 1927, p. 90; Cantatore 2010, 2019) or, even better, that archivio didattico [didactic archive] which, in the 1936 edition of Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magi-​ strale, will be defined as an indispensable repertoire of documenti umani [human documents], to borrow Gemma Harasim’s already quoted expression, which alone can provide the scholar interested in Pedagogy with sources and clues to get to know the child and the school in the course of their daily activities: ‘In the decade from 1923 to 1933, many educational archives were set up mainly to preserve, as objects of study, illustrated homework and free drawings by children, systematically ordered. There is no self-​respecting school that does not form its own collections, following the activity of pupils and teachers over classes and years of experimentation. But the most persuasive collections are those that show the entire development of the graphic language of individual pupils, over a long period of successive years.

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As well as being a necessary tool for exercises in critica didattica (which is the educational task attended to by the inspectors and directors of our schools) educational archives have very often been revelatory of exceptional artistic temperaments to be cultivated in special schools’ (Lombardo Radice 1961, p. 327). However, in addition to this undoubtedly fundamental aspect, which was at the origin of a radical rethinking of the methods of studying children’s creativity, I believe that Athena fanciulla can also be read as a book of opposition to Fascism and firm opposition to the first manifestations of its authoritarianism. This characteristic of the book can be deduced from certain passages of the essay dedicated to the Tre bimbi di città [Three City Children], in particular in the section devoted to Lu (Lucio’s shortened name). It is to his first spontaneous writing exercises that his father entrusts his anti-​fascist dissent. Un’avventura di viaggio [A Travel Adventure] is the title of the composition written by Lucio on the occasion of an exam taken at the public school to certify the learning acquired at his parents’ school. The essential traits of the family’s anti-​fascism can be deduced from the son’s sentences and his father’s commentary: ‘When we were going to Fiume [...] 3 or 4 or 5 fascists with truncheon and dagger and black shirts got on [at] a station where the train stopped and then they wanted to get off in another little village. But in that little village the train didn’t stop. So the cunning fascists pulled the alarm so they could go and look in that little village for some fascist parties but when they got off the train they didn’t close the door so at the first tunnel the door opened and it slammed “buum” “pamrà” “bllàm”. [...] The fascists had to pay the penalty’. ‘One cannot expect more from a seven-​year-​old child. In fact, I say that no normal child of that age writes more clearly and neatly than that, if the family or school respects the spontaneity of childhood. Instead, at the age of seven, children begin, in many schools, to taste rhetorical pappardelle [repeated phrases]’ (Lombardo Radice 1925, pp. 135–​136). These spontaneous considerations of the child, although produced in the formal context of a school composition, recall the climate of political-​civil commitment in the pedagogical laboratory at Caronda street. In Lucio’s words there is an echo of his parents’ indignation at the presumption, arrogance and arbitrariness of the fascist regime. A small episode, certainly, but one that sums up a more general situation and judgement. I believe that the truncheon and dagger (the tools commonly used by the grassroots fascist groups in their attacks on opponents) observed by the child in the powerfully iconic image of the fascists who broke into the train, can be interpreted as the transposition in childish terms of the paternal vision of the profoundly anti-​democratic and violent nature that, at this precise moment in 1924, at the height of the Matteotti murder, Fascism was revealing in a definitive manner. The father’s glosses, while discreet,

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are also significant. With regard to the onomatopoeia used to describe the noises made by the young troublemakers, Lombardo Radice’s comment emphasises the annoyance felt by Lucio (and the whole family) at the fascists’ display: ‘This transcription of the noises is studied and wanted by the child and seemed to him to be singularly effective:  the door banging, the glass smashing, another door banging’ (Lombardo Radice 1925, p. 135). Finally, for the explicit condemnation of the episode, stigmatised through a very civilised although implausible ‘penalty’ designed by the parents to educate their children to reproach such attitudes, Lombardo Radice comments: ‘This is how it was explained to the children, who were outraged’ (ibid., p. 135). This ‘indignation’ and this ‘penalty’, communicated to readers in the child’s innocent words, undoubtedly appear to be the expression of the definitive clarification of Lombardo Radice’s political position on Fascism. But there is more. Lucio’s remarks reveal his father’s condemnation of the more general political degeneration of those years and the progressive loss of democracy. In fact, quoting passages from a vocabulary book that Lucio created himself at home, to pay homage to his father on St. Joseph’s Day (the so-​called St. Joseph’s books were a typical custom in the Lombardo Radice household and a fundamental instrument of pedagogical work, Lombardo Radice 1927, p. 88; 1965, p. 49), under the entry ‘Dante Alighieri’ the child writes: ‘born in Firenze but then exiled because of party baruffa [brawl]’, and the father, actualising and emphasising, through his son’s observation, the authoritativeness of the children’s view of the events of their time, comments: ‘Party baruffa. The only experience, unfortunately, that this child of 1924 can have of parties is the baruffa’ (Lombardo Radice 1925, p. 137). This observation emphasises how important it is to get children to participate in adult discussions, even on topics that on the surface may still seem far removed from their interests. Confirmation of this open and dialectical climate that characterised the Lombardo Radice home, so much so that it became a laboratory of ideas where what mattered most was the non-​dogmatic acquisition of a style of thinking that was based on open confrontation, discussion, and a solid framework of general ideas, comes to us from the testimony of Lucio as an adult. An established intellectual in the Marxist sphere, he recalls his years of apprenticeship at his parents’ school in what can be considered his first book with an avowedly pedagogical slant, L’educazione della mente [The Education of Mind] (1962) –​built largely on the recollection of his experiences as the son of Giuseppe and Gemma, and as the father of three boys, Daniele, Marco and Giovanni (dedicatees of the volume), as well as on the recognition of the moral co-​authorship of their mother, Adele Maria Jemolo, just as Giuseppe had done

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with Gemma in the essay on the Tre bimbi di città4: ‘The introduction, or other-​ wise, to general ideas is one of the many forms of “involuntary”, spontaneous education given by the family. What is talked about at the table, between father and mother? [...] in general [...], and I would say almost without exception, any boy and girl who have become accustomed in the family to the circulation of “general ideas”, who have seen their parents become passionate about “everyone’s problems”, grow up to resemble their father and mother, not because they necessarily have the same ideas and interests as them, but because they have ideas and interests. [...] Of great importance in the “education in general ideas” will be the position of the woman, the mother, in the family. If both mother and father have ideas, they address problems of a general scope, the children will be best formed in the school of dialogue between the parents. [...] I remember, as if it were yesterday, the passion with which I followed the discussions of my parents and their friends on the Matteotti murder in 1924 (I was then a child): being party to them was certainly a decisive fact in my ideal formation’ (Lombardo Radice 1965, pp. 150–​152)5. These words of Lucio’s are important, revealing the background to

4 Here are the words of dedication put before L’educazione della mente by Lucio, strikingly similar to those used by his father at the opening of Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale (see footnote 3 above): ‘This little volume is dedicated to my three little sons. Reading it, they will see that the first two parts [...] have been nourished by our experiences of family life. And they will also immediately realise that whatever good their father may have written is but a reflection of what their mother did, with them and for them. [...] If the reader will find, as I hope, a deepening and a certain evolution of my thought, it is only right that he should know that it was not my effort alone, but the result of a continuous dialogue and comparison with my wife, whom I increasingly consider co-​author of this booklet’ (Lombardo Radice 1965, pp. 12–​13). Therefore, this first book by Lucio Lombardo Radice on education, which can also be read as a profound and revolutionary reflection on the relationship between parents and children, published in crucial years for the psycho-​pedagogical development of these themes, expressly continues, and renews, the technique of the family pedagogical laboratory inaugurated by his father with Athena fanciulla. Scienza e poesia della scuola serena. 5 Lucio Lombardo Radice later returned to these memories (1983, p. 15): ‘As I was born in 1916, I started to follow politics, culture, school problems from an early age. There is a great educational merit to my father and mother: that of having kept the three of us kids, me and my sisters [...] to watch, quiet and silent, all the discussions that the adults were having. So I remember the Matteotti murder, and all the events of those years; even though I was only eight years old I lived them as life experiences’. On the birth of anti-​fascism in Lucio Lombardo Radice, see: Natoli 2018; Cives 1983.

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his childhood writings which were published and studied by his father in Athena fanciulla and recognising the pedagogical style of Gemma and Giuseppe as the absolute authority in the birth of his anti-​fascism and, more generally, of his democratic and egalitarian mentality: ‘I remember as if it were today that I “debuted” as a political orator at the age of five (to the amazement of my parents, who had not trained me in any way) by supporting in front of some of my father’s friends, who were visiting, the cause of the independence of all colonial peoples, starting with those then subject to Italy’ (ibid., p. 36). These experiences would prove to be seminal in Lucio’s political formation, which would then mature definitively also thanks to the exchanges with other young intellectuals of his ge-​ neration (including Antonio Amendola, Paolo Bufalini, Manlio Mazziotti, Aldo and Ugo Natoli, Giaime Pintor, and Lucio’s own sisters), who went from idealism to Marxism, from the bitter endurance of the fascist regime’s abuses of power to the courageous choice of the clandestine anti-​fascist political struggle (Vittoria 1985, 2005). In Roma, from the second half of the 1930s, the years of decisive choices, for these young men ‘even Lombardo Radice’s house, like Pintor’s, is a point de repère: here, too, one breathes an intellectual anti-​fascism [...] that is characterised by the encounter-​clash between two generations, that of the parents, who reject Fascism as ‘barbarism and as an experience “other” from the liberal past, and that of the more children, tired of waiting and eager to carry out some concrete action’ (Calabri 2007, p. 32)6. But again, in Lucio’s words we can find confirmation of what Gemma Harasim, as we have read, assured her children, inciting them to remember and record their experiences in writing: the pleasure of enjoying, as adults, childhood memories. Following in the footsteps of his parents’ ‘techniques’, Lucio as an adult would confirm the usefulness of personal memory in the educational activity intended for his children, as long as it was calibrated on a lucid perception of the changing times: ‘We can therefore use our childhood experiences of intelligent activities for our children, we can relive in them important episodes in our cultural and mental formation; we must however also be sensitive to the new needs they feel, we must make them direct us towards other forms of play-​creation’ (Lombardo Radice 1965, p. 50). We are not far off, after all, from the founding value attributed by Lombardo Radice to the ricordo di esperienza magistrale

6 On the birth of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s anti-​fascism, read Meda 2021. Gemma Harasim herself, even after the death of her husband (1938), continued to strongly support her children’s anti-​fascism and made her home an important point of reference for the Roman Resistance (Sistoli Paoli 2009, pp. 65–​66).

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[memoir of teaching life] as an obligatory step in the critica didattica: reflecting on lived experiences and adapting the methodological indications that can be drawn from them to the new situations with which the unstoppable development of education confronts us. After all, the use of memory in an anti-​dogmatic and dialectical perspective towards any theoretical-​methodological imposition had been theorised by him as early as 1913 in the title of his most famous and successful book Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale (1913)7. The Lombardo Radice family thus represents a dense case of educational novelty, whether due to the strength of the intellectual relationship between the spouses, or the equal educational style adopted with their daughters and only son (who was indeed often invited to follow his sisters’ example in his studies). In his letters to his wife, daughters and son (Cantatore 2021a, 2021b), Lombardo Radice’s public persona and the charisma he exerted on the contemporary cultural scene are always set aside to leave room for the desire to see them again, and for attention to be paid to his children’s growth and their progress in phy-​ sical development, in their conquest of the use of the spoken language, reading, writing and graphic language, and in the formation of a libertarian and democratic civil ideal.

References Borruso, F. (2013): Harasim Gemma. In: Chiosso, G./​Sani, R. (eds.): DBE: Dizionario Biografico dell’Educazione 1800–​2000, 1. Milano, pp. 703–​704. Calabri, M.C. (2007): Il costante piacere di vivere: vita di Giaime Pintor. Torino. Cambi, F. (2005):  Lombardo Radice Giuseppe. In:  Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 65. Roma, pp. 539–​544. Cantatore, L. (2010):  Giuseppe Lombardo Radice:  per un’idea del quaderno scolastico come fonte artistico-​letteraria. In: Meda, J./​Montino, D./​Sani, R. (eds.): School exercise book: A complex source for a history of the approach to schooling and education in the 19th and 20th centuries, 2. Firenze, pp. 1325–​1338. Cantatore, L. (2013):  Lombardo Radice Giuseppe. In:  Chiosso, G./​Sani, R. (eds.):  DBE:  Dizionario Biografico dell’Educazione 1800–​2000, 1. Milano pp.  43–​45.

7 On personal memory as a starting point for pedagogical-​educational reflection, also with reference to Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s experiences in his very poor family of origin, read the touching pages in Lombardo Radice 1927, pp. 67–​68.

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Cantatore, L. (2019): The MuSEd of Roma Tre between past and present. With unpublished writings by Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and Mauro Laeng. In: History of Education & Children’s Literature 14(2), pp. 861–​884. Cantatore, L. (2020): La vita nelle tasche di uno scolaro. In: Lombardo Radice, G.: Come si uccidono le anime [1915], edizione critica a cura di L. Cantatore. Pisa, pp. 7–​38. Cantatore, L. (2021a): L’educazione dei figli come ‘sperimentazione pedagogica’. In: Scaglia, E. (ed.): Una pedagogia dell’ascesa. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e il suo tempo. Roma, pp. 100–​122. Cantatore, L. (2021b):  Memoria, infanzia, famiglia e società nelle ‘Lezioni di didattica’ di Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. Con un tema inedito di Lucio Lombardo Radice. In: Borruso, F. (ed.): Memoria, infanzia, educazione. Modelli educativi e vita quotidiana fra Otto e Novecento. Roma, pp. 83–​108. Chiosso, G. (2019):  L’educazione degli italiani:  laicità, progresso e nazione nel primo Novecento. Bologna. Cives, G. (1983): Attivismo e antifascismo in Giuseppe Lombardo Radice: ‘critica didattica’ o ‘didattica critica’?. Firenze. Cronache di una vita (1878–​1938). In: Riforma della scuola 14(8–​9), pp. 96–​117 (1968). D’Ascenzo, M. (2011): Alberto Calderara: microstoria di una professione docente tra Otto e Novecento. Bologna. Harasim, G. (1925):  Intermezzo:  il disegno infantile (appunti di una madre). In:  Lombardo Radice, G.:  Athena fanciulla:  scienza e poesia della scuola serena. Firenze, pp. 141–​220. Harasim, G. (2009): L’impegno educativo: antologia di scritti su cultura, scuola, famiglia, introduzione e cura di N. Sistoli Paoli. Roma. Lombardo Radice, G. (1969): Introduzione [1911]. In:  Amos Comenius, G. (ed.): Didattica magna. Firenze, pp. 1–​44. Lombardo Radice, G. (1913): Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale. Palermo. Lombardo Radice, G. (1916): L’ideale educativo e la scuola nazionale. Lezioni di pedagogia generale fondata sul concetto di autoeducazione. Palermo. Lombardo Radice, G. (1925):  Athena fanciulla:  scienza e poesia della scuola serena. Firenze. Lombardo Radice, G. (1927): Lettera alla signorina Rotten. In: Lombardo Radice, G.: Saggi di critica didattica, antologia con introduzione e note a cura di L. Stefanini. Torino, pp. 65–​93.

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Lombardo Radice, G. (1961): Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magi-​ strale. Firenze. Lombardo Radice, G. (2020): Come si uccidono le anime [1915], edizione critica a cura di L. Cantatore. Pisa. Lombardo Radice, L. (1965): L’educazione della mente. Roma. Lombardo Radice, L. (1983):  ‘All’anagrafe sono Lucio Lombardo’. In:  Riforma della scuola 29(1), pp. 18–​19. Meda, J. (2021): ‘Saldamente padrone della mia dignità e libertà’. La difficile convivenza con il regime fascista (1925–​1931). In: Scaglia, E. (ed.): Una pedagogia dell’ascesa. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e il suo tempo. Roma, pp. 61–​85. Natoli, C. (2018): La formazione antifascista di Lucio Lombardo Radice. In: Studi storici 59(1), pp. 63–​91. Scaglia, E. (2021): Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e il suo tempo. Ragioni di una nuova pubblicazione. In: Scaglia, E. (ed.): Una pedagogia dell’ascesa. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e il suo tempo. Roma, pp. 7–​42. Sistoli Paoli, N. (2009):  Introduzione. In:  Harasim, G.:  L’impegno educativo: antologia di scritti su cultura, scuola, famiglia, introduzione e cura di N. Sistoli Paoli. Roma, pp. 11–​69. Vittoria, A. (1985): Intellettuali e politica alla fine degli anni ‘30: Antonio Amendola e la formazione del gruppo comunista romano. Milano. Vittoria, A. (2005): Il ‘nuovo antifascismo’: giovani e intellettuali in Italia alla fine degli anni Trenta. In: Klinkhammer, L./​Natoli, C./​Rapone, L. (eds.): Dittature, opposizioni, resistenze:  Italia fascista, Germania nazionalsocialista, Spagna franchista: storiografie a confronto. Milano, pp. 219–​248.

Brunella Serpe

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and the National Association for the Interests of the Italian Mezzogiorno (1910–​1938) Abstract

Lombardo Radice played a key role in the National Association for the Interests of the Italian Mezzogiorno (ANIMI), as may be seen from the interesting and partly unpublished documentation kept in the archives of the Association, which makes it possible to reconstruct his strong commitment and significant presence even in the remotest places and communities where these important projects were implemented. The Processi Verbali (minutes of meetings) and Relazioni (reports) that reveal the debate within the Association, the letters between its members, the Italian and foreign press articles that recorded Lombardo Radice’s human and cultural side in the months following his untimely death and the tribute in which Isnardi sought to list the stages of his life all combine to give us a complete portrait of his personality and his commitment to the struggle against illiteracy and in support of the social and cultural emancipation of the Italian Mezzogiorno. Keywords: history of education, Lombardo Radice, National Association for the Interests of the Italian Mezzogiorno (ANIMI), adult education, innovation in pedagogy and teaching

The National Association for the Interests of the Italian Mezzogiorno [Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, ANIMI] was instituted in Roma on 1 March 1910 on the initiative of prominent intellectuals including Pasquale Villari, Leopoldo Franchetti, Giuseppina Le Maire, Gaetano Salvemini, Giovanni Malvezzi and Giustino Fortunato (Serpe 2004; Pescosolido 2011, pp. 21–​120). Accorded the status of ‘Moral Entity’ by Royal Decree 218 of 5 March 1911, among its founders was Giuseppe Lombardo Radice1. In one of its founding meetings, held on 28 February 1911, the Catania pe-​ dagogue was elected to the Association’s board, on which Franchetti and Villari

1 Historical archive of the Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, ANIMI, Roma, Processi Verbali, Minutes of the meeting, 27 February 1910, vol. I, 1910, p. 3.

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were named as honorary and effective chairmen respectively2. Lombardo Radice (Scaglia 2021, pp. 8–​36; Cives 1979, pp. 513–​516) was among the supporters of the programme for the Mezzogiorno drawn up by the Association, which sought to ‘promote and implement […] initiatives designed to ensure its improvement, especially with regard to the development and dissemination of education and social measures’ (Serpe 2004, p. 66). Lombardo Radice did not believe that the Southern question could be resolved by means of measures imposed from above, as observed by Dina Bertoni Jovine, who noted some of his statements: ‘The true Southerner, that is, one who loves their country […], studies the problems of the Mezzogiorno and organises, to the best of their ability, public opinion even where it appears that there cannot be any’ (Bertoni Jovine 1968, p. 73). What was required then was not just words, but a wide-​ranging life commitment and activity that according to Bertoni Jovine began with Lombardo Radice joining ANIMI, an association that ‘did not develop along charitable lines, as might have been the case, given the circumstances in which it had arisen (following the earthquake of 1908), but rather became, as a result of [Lombardo Radice’s] efforts and those of fellow educators, an organisation that was fully dedicated to the formation of independent minds’ (ibid., pp. 74–​75). At first, Lombardo Radice’s involvement in the life of the Association was episodic, as shown by the earliest accounts (Processi Verbali) of the organisation’s meetings, which initially focused on providing assistance and support to the populations that had been most severely affected by the earthquake that destroyed Reggio Calabria and Messina in 1908. More direct participation on the part of Lombardo Radice in the activities that the Association had begun in those areas was then impeded by the outbreak of the First World War, which saw him involved on the front. On the occasion of Franchetti’s confirmation as Chairman of the Association, Lombardo Radice sent a letter to the head office of ANIMI in which he officially endorsed Franchetti’s candidacy for re-​election. Lombardo Radice wrote: ‘The second invitation for me to vote for the selection of our Chairman was forwarded from Catania to me up here in the beautiful mountains of Trento; forgive me then if I have not replied until today. I ask you to give our esteemed Senator Franchetti my sincere greetings. He is the soul of the Association for the Mezzogiorno, which after the war will guide the reawakened energies of our people, who have proven to be greater, stronger and sounder than anyone could have imagined before this terrible crisis. Up here the southerners

2 Ibid., Minutes of the Meeting, 28 February 1910, p. 18.

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are among the best soldiers; even the non-​combatants have performed audacious feats, with admirable intelligence, calm and order. The re-​election of our Chairman thus represents not just the recognition of him as a person but also the affirmation of the desire for renewal that must drive all of us to give our great people of the South their well-​earned prize’3. In the aftermath of the First World War, Lombardo Radice regularly attended the Association’s meetings. His contributions were characterised by cultural rigour, support for the initiatives promoted by the organisation and full agreement with the positions expressed by Isnardi and Zanotti Bianco. With the former, he exchanged views concerning the Italian school system and the need to tackle issues affecting schools in the Mezzogiorno in particular. In contrast, with the latter he discussed the importance of setting up nursery schools and promoting initiatives in support of adult literacy, recognising in the indifference and neglect in relation to childhood –​and specifically the lack of nursery and elementary schools –​the cause of the ignorance that was reflected in the high rate of illiteracy, typical of the Mezzogiorno and especially the areas in which ANIMI’s efforts were applied, i.e. Basilicata, Calabria, Sardinia and Sicily. The emphasis on Meridionalist thought and mass education was a key element for Lombardo Radice and it explains his unconditional support for ANIMI’s programme of measures in the most depressed areas of Southern Italy. It was on the basis of these important aspects that his political-​cultural activism evolved, bringing him closer to Isnardi and Zanotti Bianco, as well as Giovanni Gentile and Benedetto Croce. The Association’s head office, housed for a long time in Palazzo Taverna in Roma, became a meeting point for all those who shared its ideals and goals and supported the measures undertaken in support of schools and education. For Lombardo Radice the Association represented an opportunity to reflect on the teaching culture of the first decade of the 20th century and to plan further measures and initiatives for schools and education. In addition, he showed a strong interest in the cultural dimension of the teachers, whose training he believed should be supported, encouraged and improved. The means by which this was to be achieved included sending out teaching circulars concerning adult education and preparing materials to be distributed to all the Association’s schools. Lombardo Radice played a key role in ANIMI, as shown by the interesting documentation, not all of which has been published, kept in the Association’s archives, which enables us to reconstruct his intense commitment: from cultural

3 Historical archive of the Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, ANIMI, Roma, Processi Verbali, Minutes of the Meeting 14 July 1917, pp. 184–​185.

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initiatives to his attendance in the remote communities where major projects were implemented; from the jobs and posts that he held (frequently linked to his publishing activities) to his involvement in the Association’s board meetings; from his written correspondence with the different members of the Association to the numerous articles published in the Italian and foreign press in the months following his unexpected death. The latter revealed his human and cultural side, as did the heartfelt tribute in which Isnardi, inspired by feelings of friendship and regard and in accordance with the noble objectives they had shared, sought to list the stages of his life, both public and private. There is great significance in a passage in a letter in which Isnardi urges the pedagogue to seek to create a space in the journal L’educazione nazionale that he edited, dedicated to the debate over the problems that afflicted schools in the South, whose results were too far outside the national parameters. As Isnardi wrote to Lombardo Radice in December 1920: ‘There should be a column for the schools of the Mezzogiorno. The question of the Mezzogiorno is becoming a popular topic in Italy. Today, in Fiume, the political and territorial Risorgimento has truly been completed. Also finished perhaps is the reciprocal contamination of politics and literature, one of our most terrible national diseases. Today another Risorgimento begins in earnest: the moral one, and it begins in the South, in the name of the South. We educators should be the first to understand and to act in this sense […] we see in you a guide, we see in you our strength, we do not want you to be alone and we do not want to be alone ourselves […]. Each of us commits to performing a certain task for the journal and duly performs it. We need to act as an army once again. I am ready, and I shall tell you my own special areas of expertise: the Mezzogiorno (based on my own knowledge of it) […]’4. Calling on Lombardo Radice to participate in a meeting in Turin, at which Monti, Croce, Prezzolini and Salvemini were also due to be present, Isnardi did not hesitate to raise the questions to which those working in the sphere of education expected answers. These concerned both the cultural debate and the new laws being promulgated in connection with the freedom of teaching and the aversion to examinations, marks, and registers: a school that according to Isnardi needed to identify itself with the twin principles of ‘liberty and responsibility’5 and not with the long litany of measures imposed from above.

4 Historical archive of the Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, ANIMI, Roma, Letter from Giuseppe Isnardi to Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, Turin 31/​ 12/​1920, Fund Isnardi, Correspondence. 5 Ibid.

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Isnardi was not the only one looking closely at the journal L’educazione nazionale: the entire Association expressed ‘solidarity and recognition for the work […] performed on behalf of schools’6 by Lombardo Radice, who, via the journal’s pages, provided a tool for cultural growth that was indispensable to all those working in the field of education (Colaci 2000). 1921 saw the approval of the Opera contro l’analfabetismo [Action against Illiteracy], a law introduced by the Minister Mario Orso Corbino. With the help of various boards and associations, and deploying more convincing methods, the law aimed to drastically reduce the high number of illiterate adults, reinforcing the efforts of Lombardo Radice in the field in support of the Mezzogiorno. It also led to him being appointed as the Director General and supervisor of ANIMI’s educational activities in Sicily, and subsequently as a member of the Association’s Executive Committee. He was joined by other figures from the Association including Zanotti Bianco, strengthening and accelerating the decisions regarding the measures to be adopted in the fight against illiteracy7. This in fact signalled a renewed commitment towards his place of origin, Sicily, which, as Isnardi records, followed his support for the refugees created by the Messina earthquake of 1908. In those dramatic circumstances, Lombardo Radice had worked prodigiously to provide assistance for them in Catania, facilitating the foundation of a women’s association for the care of mothers and children. This initiative no doubt paved the way for his contribution to the constitution of ANIMI and its programme, which was notably characterised by measures to provide support and increase the level of education among the most vulnerable sectors of the Southern populations8. With the support of the Association, Lombardo Radice conducted a study in Sicily to determine the existence and functioning of children’s camps (by the sea and in the mountains), libraries, nurseries and clinics, with the intention of creating others in the places where the need for such structures was greatest. The board of ANIMI decided to ‘allocate […] the sum of 100 thousand lire […] entrusting the Councillor for Sicily, Prof. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, with the

6 Historical archive of the Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, ANIMI, Roma, Processi Verbali, Minutes of the Meeting 5 February 1921, p. 260. 7 Historical archive of the Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, ANIMI, Roma, Processi Verbali, Minutes of the Meeting 12 November 1923, p. 295. 8 Historical archive of the Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, ANIMI, Roma, Cronache di una vita, Fund G. Isnardi, Minutes and work notes, printing proofs, pp. 31–​32.

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task of gathering relevant information and making proposals concerning the resources necessary for those institutions’9. This experience was to prove useful when preparing measures in support of adult education in Sicily. Under the leadership of Lombardo Radice and with the contribution of three inspectors working in three different parts of the island (‘Palermo-​Trapani:  Prof. G. Liotta. Girgenti-​Caltaniss.[etta]:  Prof. A. Sciacca. Catania-​Messina-​Siracusa:  Prof. V. Chialant’)10, significant results were achieved: ‘magnificent work’11 in both organisational and educational terms. It was not easy to recruit teachers and raise sufficient awareness among adults to convince them to attend evening and Sunday classes. However, introducing large numbers of men and women to the alphabet proved to be a success, as shown by the images of parents and children working together to conquer the alphabet. These images are conserved in the archive of the Association, which, together with those linked to the organisation’s many other activities, complete and significantly enrich the periodic reports (Relazioni) published by the Association. These reports also give a detailed picture of the educational activities conducted by the Association (which included evening classes for illiterate adults, afternoon and Sunday classes for illiterate women and rural daytime schools organised to suit the needs of herdsmen). Further information is provided by the Relazioni under the heading Opera contro l’Analfabetismo and by the Appendice (Appendix) added to some of the quarterly and annual editions. Other sources include the volume on ANIMI’s first fifty years, the Circolari (Circulars) sent by Lombardo Radice (gathered in the Supplementi dell’educazione nazionale of 1928 and 1929) and other periodic publications issued from 1921 to 1928. These pages tell the story of that experience:  a sort of diary of the work performed in the field, including detailed summaries by the various Directors, who stress not just the progress but also the impediments to their actions and those of the teachers arising from the difficulties they faced. These problems included the condition of the classrooms, which were housed in improvised buildings that were unsuitable even from the point of view of hygiene, as documented by thorough enquiries into the state of school buildings, and the absence of an adequate road network (Zanotti Bianco 1925; Malvezzi/​Zanotti Bianco 1910). The long-​ standing material poverty of schools in the Mezzogiorno continued to represent

9 Historical archive of the Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, ANIMI, Roma, Processi Verbali, Minutes of the Meeting 29 June 1921, pp. 230-​231. 10 Ibid., Minutes of the Meeting 16 October 1921, p. 248. 11 Ibid., Minutes of the Meeting 5 February 1922, p. 259.

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a grave problem that risked undermining the efforts of those working to eradicate illiteracy. Published on a quarterly, annual and triennial basis, the Relazioni covered the Association’s various activities in the Mezzogiorno, faithfully reflecting its numerous initiatives in the different fields: nursery schools and playgroups, culture, health and hygiene, studies and enquiries and works of a varied and general nature. In addition to contributions by people working for ANIMI in various capacities, the Relazioni also carried news regarding the Association’s board, head office and regional branches, members, extraordinary donations, and publications. One aspect that proved to be of great importance was the creation of libraries, which, as the Relazioni show, helped the teaching body stay up-​to-​date. Also of great interest are the numerous courses held in certain locations of the Mezzogiorno on essential topics such as hygiene and the social value of making schools ‘a focal point of hygiene education’12. There were also courses on the prevention of ‘other diseases of schoolchildren’13, including infectious diseases, which the teachers were expected to be able to recognise and deal with. However, the Relazioni are also important because they show us the presence, work, and contribution of Lombardo Radice. The initial training and refresher courses for teachers represent a fundamental aspect of ANIMI’s work, as do the efforts to help illiterate adults. The teachers, who were qualified but in many cases unemployed, were awarded prizes for each pupil that passed the school leaving exam, and this also increased the effectiveness of the schools for adults, which were greeted with much enthusiasm in the Mezzogiorno: ‘there was much demand for the institution of schools, as well as large numbers of prospective pupils, which in many towns could not be met because the resources for a more extensive creation of schools were lacking’ (Isnardi 1960, pp. 209–​210). The Association received much praise for the institution of libraries and for their role in the dissemination of culture from the various Southern provinces where the circulation of books was considered still too low. Among the most interesting accounts are those from Sicily, written and sent by the most trusted colleagues of Lombardo Radice, who supervised all the measures enacted in the struggle against illiteracy. In 1925, the Regional Director of the Office of Girgenti in Sicily wrote: ‘What is needed in my opinion is a precise, patient and

12 Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, ‘Relazione Trimestrale (Luglio-​Agosto-​Settembre 1926)’, Appendice. S.l., n.d., p. 19. 13 Ibid., pp.  23-​24.

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incessant work of penetration; to create, develop and awaken the desire to stay up-​to-​date with the progress of thought. We need to get books circulating: often they sit there in public, school and college libraries, where they sleep peacefully for months and years, covered in a thick layer of dust […]. What is needed then is a preparatory propaganda phase, encouraging people to take up reading, with a view to subsequently obtaining the widespread distribution of books among the masses’14. According to the Regional Director of the Girgenti Office, in order to achieve this objective, it was necessary to involve everybody, from the citizens to the teachers, from the regional head of education to the local press, and then to ‘urge teachers employed by the Association to conduct their own low-​level personal promotion campaigns, in their workplaces, and with the families of the pupils invited to participate’15. This work needed to be consolidated through the provision of courses for adults, with lessons held in the evening and weekend schools in the Sicilian provinces. An example is the hygiene lessons involving the local health authorities (Serpe/​Stizzo 2021, pp. 87–​93), which, in addition to teaching the most elementary norms of hygiene  –​including ‘Washing of the hands, face, head, mouth, clothes […] Hygiene in the home […] garments […] Alcoholism and its consequences […] Workplace diseases and hygiene’ (ANIMI 1922, pp. 77–​80) –​covered themes linked to the working environment of illiterate adults, explaining theoretical aspects and illustrating innovative practices (ibid., pp. 83–​84). These references provide important, albeit indirect testimony, in which it is easy to detect the influence of Lombardo Radice and his personal inspiration, which guided him in thought and practice towards socially educative initiatives, reflecting the spirit of the Opera contro l’Analfabetismo and ANIMI. Although the locations were often among the least hospitable in the Mezzogiorno, the institution of thousands of schools, the recruitment and training of teachers and the enrolment of a high number of illiterate adults16 can be considered an exceptional result, achieved thanks to the dedication and generosity of men such as 14 Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, ‘Relazione Trimestrale (Ottobre-​Novembre-​Dicembre 1925)’. Appendice. Roma: Tipografia Editrice Laziale-​A. Marchesi, n.d., p. 20. 15 Ibid. 16 The data and statistics on the schools for illiterate adults are summarised in tables subdivided by region and school year presented in the Appendix of the volume by the National Association for the Interests of the Italian Mezzogiorno entitled L’Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia nei suoi primi cinquant’anni di vita, Roma, Collezione Meridionale Editrice, 1960, pp. 272–​274.

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Lombardo Radice and Piacentini, personalities of the highest order, who were able to pull the strings of the project and direct measures from an educational and cultural point of view (Isnardi 1965). Lombardo Radice is recognised as the driver, the educationalist who put together the Pagine di Lettura (adult students’ reading materials), which were also used by other organisations tasked with combatting illiteracy. This intense educational activity was reflected in materials that were marked by an affinity for popular culture, its forms of art and its typical occupations, and full of suggestions regarding the rules of civil life, in which hygiene was a central element. As Isnardi points out, all this ‘was conceived and prepared in Catania’ (Isnardi 1960, pp. 214–​215), before being put into practice by the Association, whose efforts were guided by the pedagogic culture of Lombardo Radice, who, first in Sicily and subsequently in other regions, boosted participation and launched effective initiatives, getting teachers, ordinary citizens and municipal authorities to take on and share responsibilities: ‘Particularly important in this sense are the reports of the three Directors of Sicily, the region where Lombardo Radice’s presence […] proved to be highly motivating, in a sort of uninterrupted effusion of his temperament and its continuous infusion in the hearts of others. Regions such as Calabria, Basilicata and Sardinia appeared less ready, less prepared and less amenable; but Lombardo Radice’s new and inspiring spirit soon reached them and yielded its positive effects’ (ibid., p. 219). In 1922 Lombardo Radice left Sicily, at Giovanni Gentile’s behest, to become the Direttore generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare in Roma (November 1922–​June 1924). However, his legacy is truly enormous, above all fruitful and marked by the innovative spirit that characterised the educational reform of 1923. The small Southern schools where the Association’s personnel continued to work maintained the most authentic application of its teaching directives and proved to be a ‘happy test bed’ (ibid., pp. 221–​223) for its pedagogical theories. This was how Lombardo Radice himself saw the Association’s little schools, describing them as an ‘experimental field’ that road-​tested the Gentile reform and its programmes (ANIMI n.d., p. 7). In addition to the calendars of the Montesca school which were illustrated by young herdsmen, evidence of this renewed pedagogical-​educational sensitivity is seen in the many illustrations by the pupils who attended the Association’s schools. Lombardo Radice himself never failed to ask those working in the field to obtain these drawings from the pupils, some of which were sent to him by children at the ‘Leopoldo Franchetti’ school camp, located in Santo Stefano in Aspromonte in Calabria. With drawings and

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captions like ‘How we spend the days in the camp’17, these images depict the special days, activities, people, and places of a school that used drawing as a mode of expression that was to be prized. The pictures demonstrate the effectiveness and validity of a profound renewal of teaching that was appropriate for schools for illiterate adults but also for the entire Italian school system. All of this is strongly echoed in the Preface to the volume entitled Le nostre scuole. L’Opera contro l’analfabetismo in Basilicata, Calabria, Sardegna e Sicilia (1923–​1924) [Our schools. Action against Illiteracy in Basilicata, Calabria, Sardinia and Sicily, 1923–​1924]. The work was written by Lombardo Radice, although officially it is the work of the Executive Committee, which was set up by the Association in order to make decision-​making faster and more agile. Lombardo Radice wrote the preface immediately after resigning from the post of Direttore generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare. According to Isnardi, the preface ‘is the mirror of a soul that seeks to reach into the souls of others and succeeds amazingly […] it seems to sing for joy of our years of working with him, of our participation in his educational poetry’ (Isnardi 1960, p. 229). The secret of the success of the measures against adult illiteracy was clearly identified by Lombardo Radice: ‘The agility of new institutions; the multiple adjustments to make teaching suitable for peasant farmers and manual workers in the various regions; simple and practical regulations, continuously revised and modified in detail in accordance with experience; the creation […] of special schools in which to verify their value; rapid abandonment and rapid replacement of technical expedients that are locally found to be unsuitable; correction of teachers’ defects […]: This is what the character of our schools is mainly based on, the result of a deliberate choice by the legislators, who aimed not at uniformity in teaching but at differentiation […] creating a considerable number of schools, each with its own individuality. The day schools differ in accordance with the context, following school calendars that vary from place to place […]; in some areas the common day school is configured as a work school; then there is the women’s evening school, and in many places it has become a workshop-​school; in many areas our little schools have functioned as a malaria clinic, becoming the centre for information and health assistance for the population’ (ANIMI n.d., pp.  3–​4). Lombardo Radice made detailed comments on how to manage relations with the schools, with particular emphasis on personal visits and meetings with

17 Historical archive of the Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, ANIMI, Roma, Fund G. Isnardi 1902–​1967.

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the teachers by the Association’s directors and its Secretary Piacentini:  ‘Go in person rather than write’; ‘take the teaching aids and explain how to use them, rather than shipping them together with a circular’ […]; ‘ask for concrete reports, responding to specific points’; ‘collect documentation on school life, even of the most mundane kind, such as pupils’ tasks and drawings, in order to perform an inspection remotely when it is not possible to do so in person’; ‘bring the teachers together and encourage them to visit each other’s schools’; ‘orient teaching research towards the study of the distinctiveness of teaching in the individual schools’ (ibid., p. 5). Also of great importance however were his circulars which were rich in ‘pedagogical, teaching, and human substance’ (Isnardi 1960, p. 232), and useful for making the educational work of the teachers and schools more effective and for elevating oneself and others. In a similar vein were his notes on the social value of quinine, a remedy for malaria, on the usefulness of suitable reading materials and the rediscovery of exemplary figures from the history of schooling in the various regions of Italy, without forgetting his recommendations to teachers to tackle the competitive recruitment exams with a sense of responsibility (ibid., pp. 231–​235). The freedom of action that had given meaning and incisiveness to ANIMI’s educational programme, which Lombardo Radice himself described as ‘varied, rich, agile, adaptable’ (ANIMI n.d., p. 6), came into conflict with the interference of the Fascist regime, finally prompting the Association to return its mandate to the Minister of Education Pietro Fedele, thereby ending its measures against adult illiteracy. The project had lasted eight years, from 1921 to 1928, but had almost ended in 1925, being saved only thanks to the intervention of Gentile, which had resulted in the Ministry of Education granting the Association a further brief extension of its autonomy. As well as in the Relazioni, significant data on the difficult relationship with the Fascist authorities can be found in the Verbali (minutes) of the Association’s meetings, which give a full account of the Association’s stance on this issue, partly developed by Lombardo Radice himself, who continued to attend all the meetings (Consigli) even after taking up his post at the Ministry. The difficulties were of both a financial nature, because the Association was obliged to pay the teachers from its own budget due to delayed payments by the government, and of an ideological nature, igniting a debate within the Association. While for Gentile, withdrawal risked being seen as ‘clearly political, despite being motivated by the […] desire to maintain the Association’s apolitical character’18, for Lombardo

18 Historical archive of the Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia,

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Radice, the moral reasons could not be hidden: they ‘remain […] at the forefront and have a paramount value. All the financial sacrifices and all the limitations could […] be tolerated, if the freedom of our schools was guaranteed, if we could without hindrance appoint and remove teachers, considering only their educational merits and mistakes, regardless of any other motives and pressures. Can this be obtained? Can it still be done? He has his doubts, he does not think so, and so he is for the [Association’s] withdrawal from the schools’19. This finally happened in 1928 ‘due to the absence of the spirit of goodwill and cooperation with the Association on the part of those officials who were tasked with following our work most directly […]. Once the withdrawal was formalised, the management was handed over to the Boards entrusted with the task […]’20. However, the Verbali also fully confirm Lombardo Radice’s thought and proposals concerning the problems to be tackled and the initiatives to be promoted, which could never succeed without studying the local geography and analysing the needs of each individual context, as shown by his appeals for greater investment to repair certain ‘crumbling’ nursery schools21. His interest in the teaching body never waned, as shown by the request for funds presented to the Association for ‘voluntary training courses for working teachers’22. The courses always received funding, proving the trust and esteem in which he was held by the entire Board of ANIMI. Also worthy of mention is his support for Zanotti Bianco’s proposal for ‘a training centre for master gardeners of the Mezzogiorno’23, which the pedagogue saw as ‘decisive proof of what the Association can do for the Mezzogiorno’24. The many successful measures supported by Lombardo Radice to help the spread of schools and education as a way of ensuring the social improvement of the poorest classes are also documented by a considerable corpus of photographs that attest to his physical presence even in the smallest and remotest communities of Calabria. An example is the inauguration of the ‘Torino’ elementary school in Sant’Angelo di Cetraro in the province of Cosenza in 1924, which took place in the presence of Lombardo Radice, Isnardi, Le Maire and a large group of

19 20 21 22 23 24

ANIMI, Roma, Processi Verbali, Minutes of the Meeting 9 August 1925, pp. 327–​328. Ibid., pp. 329–​330. Ibid., Minutes of the Meeting 16 December 1928, pp. 379–​380. Ibid., Minutes of the Meeting 15 December 1925, p. 335. Ibid., Minutes of the Meeting 12 November 1923, p. 296. Ibid., Minutes of the Meeting 8 February 1925, p. 315. Ibid., p. 316.

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women from Turin. The women had supported the project financially, together with ANIMI, in response to the urgent requests from Arcangelo Verta, a local teacher, who fervently wished to give his village a school. In 1934 Isnardi wrote to Lombardo Radice: ‘Listen: the 15th of this month 1934 is the 10th anniversary of the inauguration of the school in S.  Angelo. Send Arcangelo Verta a message in memory of the occasion. He deserves it. He is always up there, heroically defending his humble community and their school. How he has suffered since that year for the school. I’ll tell you about it. I sent a reminder to Mei, in Turin, as well’25. The Sant’Angelo episode reveals an extraordinary historical truth:  ANIMI succeeded in bringing together far-​sighted figures, among whom Lombardo Radice stands out. His untimely demise generated a considerable quantity of writings from various locations, in Italy and elsewhere: tributes that recalled his work as an educator and legislator, his ideal of an active and happy school as an environment of growth not just for pupils but also for teachers, who could improve themselves, learning by teaching. Of all the commemorative writings, that of Isnardi, who had known, admired and followed him, generating a large body of letters, gives an unselfconscious description of the pedagogue from Catania: ‘Having left us, he is always one who precedes and one who teaches. This very act of commemoration on the part of the many who loved him, young and old, witnesses to a life marked by active abnegation, represents a continuation in accordance with his teaching, which can still be heard around us with the affectionate timbre of his voice. To evoke him is to meditate still on the ways in which we may do good for others, which is exactly what he wanted from us, in accordance with the most intimate assumptions of his thought as an educator. These he indicated to us once when speaking of another great figure [Pestalozzi], his proximity to whom we all recognised: The way of salvation lies in the serene conquests of the spirit, possible only for those who examine their own soul and, by helping themselves, become able to help others’. To help others. This could well be the essence of his entire life, and certainly of his work as an educator and writer on education, which unfolded over an intense thirty-​odd years26. 25 Historical archive of the Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, ANIMI, Roma, Letter from Giuseppe Isnardi to Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, 13/​4/​ 1934, Fund Isnardi, Correspondence. 26 Isnardi, G.: In memoria di Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. In: Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, Relazione sull’attività dell’Associazione nel triennio 1936–​1938, Appendice. Roma, p. 49.

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References Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia (ANIMI). (1922): Il nostro lavoro nel Mezzogiorno. Catania. Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia (ANIMI). (Sd.): Le nostre scuole. L’Opera contro l’Analfabetismo in Basilicata, Calabria, Sardegna e Sicilia (1923–​1924). Roma. Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia (ANIMI). (1960): L’Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia nei suoi primi cinquant’anni di vita. Roma. Bertoni Jovine, D. (1968):  Giuseppe Lombardo Radice organizzatore di cultura. In: Ingrao, C./​Lombardo Radice, L. (eds.): Nel trentesimo della morte. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. Studi, testimonianze, inchiesta, documenti, lettere inedite, biografia, ricordi fotografici. In: Riforma della scuola 14. Roma. Cives, G. (1979):  Giuseppe Lombardo Radice a cento anni dalla sua nascita. In: Scuola e Città 30(12). Colaci, A.M. (2000): Gli anni della riforma. Giuseppe Lombardo-​Radice e ‘L’educazione nazionale’. Lecce. Isnardi, G. (1960): L’attività educativa scolastica dell’Associazione. In: Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia:  L’Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia nei suoi primi cinquant’anni di vita. Roma. Isnardi, G. (1965): Cinquant’anni di lavoro per le aree depresse. In: Isnardi, G., Frontiera Calabrese. Napoli, pp. 349-​ 355. Malvezzi G./​Zanotti Bianco U. (1910): L’Aspromonte occidentale. Milano. Pescosolido, G. (ed.) (2011): Cento anni di attività dell’Associazione Nazionale per gli Interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia e la questione meridionale oggi. Soveria Mannelli. Scaglia, E. (2021): Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e il suo tempo. Ragioni di una nuova pubblicazione. In: Scaglia, E. (ed.): Una pedagogia dell’ascesa. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e il suo tempo, Roma. Serpe, B. (2004): La Calabria e l’opera dell’ANIMI. Per una storia dell’istruzione in Calabria. Cosenza. Serpe, B./​Stizzo, F. (2021):  Un progetto di bonifica socio-​sanitaria:  ambulatori, colonie e asili infantili nella Calabria della prima metà del Novecento. In: Pedagogia oggi 19(1). Zanotti Bianco, U. (1925): Il martirio della scuola in Calabria. Firenze.

Juri Meda

The political persecution of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice by the fascist regime (1924–​1931) Abstract

The work and thought of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice have been studied in depth in the past from a pedagogical perspective, but less so from a political one (Cives 1983; Cantatore 2013). In fact, the study of the political profile of the great Catanian pedagogist has always presented many critical issues insofar as it was difficult to fit him into rigid ideological schemes, in a historical period in which such schemes were detrimental to those who decided to break them in the name of an intellectual freedom and autonomy that were ill-​tolerated and that would soon be interpreted as symptoms of an absolute irreducibility to the homologising thrusts of the emerging totalitarian regime. It is with this awareness that –​in the following pages –​we will attempt to outline a precise reconstruction of the fierce political persecution to which this important exponent of Italian pedagogy was subjected by the fascist regime in the years between 1924 and 1931, based on largely unpublished archive documents. Keywords: Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, fascism, anti-​fascism, education, neoidealism

The resignation from the Direzione generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare and the gradual departure from Gentile On 6 June 1924 Giuseppe Lombardo Radice resigned from the Direzione generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare, having been placed at the head of the organisation on 4 January 1923 by Minister Giovanni Gentile, who had himself taken office, at the direct request of Benito Mussolini, on 30 October 1922 after the March on Roma. The letter of resignation, addressed specifically to Gentile, explained:  ‘Your Excellency, the work for which Your Excellency thought to invite me to temporarily leave my office as a university professor can now be considered completed. The single text is before the Council of State; the particular regulations prepared and largely already tested by implementation as ordinances; the revision of textbooks completed. I therefore take the liberty of asking Your Excellency to consider whether I should not return to my office in higher education, in any of the universities to which Your Excellency may assign me.

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Once again, Your Excellency, I express my profound gratitude to you for having offered me the opportunity to collaborate in your school reform, which marks such a great renewal of the administrative and didactic order. This will be the greatest honour for me in my entire life’1. His decision was ratified on 19 June 1924, when he officially stepped down as Direttore generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare2. The following day Lombardo Radice wrote again to Minister Gentile to request a transfer from the University of Pisa to the Regio Istituto Superiore di Magistero in Roma, where the chair of Pedagogy was vacant3. In the following weeks, Lombardo Radice received fierce criticism for his decision, but also numerous letters of support, including those from Gaetano Salvemini (who had also previously advised him to accept the ministerial post offered by Gentile), Dino Provenzal, Santino Caramella and Ettore Fabietti. The relationship with Gentile inevitably frayed. In a hand-​written letter dated 9 September 1924, Gentile wrote to Lombardo Radice, clarifying his position on the Fascist regime and reprimanding him for his irresolution:  ‘As for my attitude towards Fascism, it is so radically different from yours that it is not easy for me to reason with you. I deeply despise oppositions, all of them: I have an invincible feeling of their insincerity in all their polemics for morality and freedom. You only have to see what they write about me and my reforms. The country is ruined, without political conscience, without any living current. On the periphery there is still, it is true, what it was before. But I cannot give up, because of the polemics of people who I know lack faith and good faith, the hopes placed in this ferment of new life, which is at the centre, and which has made possible, what seemed impossible and absurd, an attempt at renewal such as mine. Many mistakes have been made. I am too busy (and so are you) having made some, cruelly even. But I [have] a clear conscience as you, and I am not able to make an exact trial of other people’s mistakes. Violence has been committed. It is true, and that

1 Copy of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s letter to Giovanni Gentile dated 6 June 1924, in Museo della Scuola e dell’Educazione ‘Mauro Laeng’, Università degli Studi Roma 3 (Italy), archival fund ‘Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’ (henceforth: MuSEd, GLR), series ‘Documenti personali’, sub-​series ‘Insegnamento’. 2 Royal Decree of 19 June 1924, in Archivio Centrale dello Stato di Roma, Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, Direzione Generale dell’Istruzione Superiore, Fascicoli personale insegnante e amministrativo, II versamento, 2a series, box 86, folder Giuseppe Lombardo Radice (henceforth: ACS, MPI, DGIS, FP, II vers., 2a series, b. 86, f. GLR). 3 Cf. Copy of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s letter to Giovanni Gentile of 20 June 1924, in MuSEd, GLR, series ‘Personal Documents’, sub-​series ‘Teaching’.

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is painful. But one cannot judge a historical fact from such incidents. [...] You will remember that when I proposed the Direzione Generale to you, I was careful not to force the invitation, knowing your spirit. But can you seriously regret the... great good, the miracle you performed at the Ministry? Beware of certain feelings that are for a woman and not a man. Politics is a serious and worthy thing, if it is done with courage and looking far’4. Lombardo Radice replied to him the following day with a very frank letter, which read among other things: ‘I am alone. I will remain alone. I will express with good taste and measure my reservations towards Fascism; I will not leave my field, which is the school’ (Cavallera 1997, p. 446). He was true to his word. That same month, Lombardo Radice published an editorial in L’Educazione Nazionale in which he set out the reasons for his collaboration in drafting the text of the reform and his recent resignation from the role of Direttore generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare, stating that he felt more in his rightful place ‘alongside the teachers’ and that he wanted ‘the school to help itself to keep out of violence and rhetoric’ (Lombardo Radice 1924). As Roberto Mazzetti well observed, this editorial constituted ‘an act of rebellion against the identity between state, nation, and party, [...] an act of distrust in the nation of adults and their parties’, but also ‘an act of confident confession in the school as the organ of childhood, to be saved from the turbid influences of all kinds’ (Mazzetti 1958, p. 239). Lombardo Radice’s profession of faith seemed to disregard what now appeared to be an inescapable reality: the Italian school would not be able to keep out of nationalist rhetoric for much longer and indeed in the following years it would become one of the main centres for the spread of fascist propaganda within society. Gentile’s reaction this time was outraged. In an undated letter, traced back to that period, written by Gentile to Ernesto Codignola, and published long ago by Rino Gentili in one of his articles, Gentile expressed himself scornfully as follows: ‘Dearest... did you see Lombardo’s gaffe? It made me so angry, also because I could no longer support him in the Consiglio Superiore. And it’s a mess. And I no longer intend to tolerate these beautiful anti-​fascist souls, who are lurking in the Associazione del Mezzogiorno5. We will soon come to blows’ (Gentili 1967, p. 73). 4 Archivio storico dell’Istituto Storico di Documentazione, Innovazione e Ricerca Educativa di Firenze, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, deposit 2003, series ‘Corrispondenza pubblica’, box 40 (henceforth: AsINDIRE, GLR, dep. 2003, CP, b. 40), folder ‘P.M.... 1924’, sub-​folder ‘Correspondence with Gentile on Fascism’. 5 The ‘beautiful anti-​fascist souls’ of the ANIMI [National Association for the Interests of Southern Italy] were –​in addition to Lombardo Radice –​Umberto Zanotti Bianco,

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On 23 October 1924 –​after the editorial had been picked up by numerous newspapers  –​Gentile wrote a harsh letter to Lombardo Radice, in which he reproached him as follows: ‘Dear Beppe, I confess that I had not read your statement in Educazione Nazionale before it reappeared with the comments of the opposition newspapers. And I must tell you that I was very sorry, and not only for myself and Casati, who are implicitly condemned in it (at least as two blind men or two fools); but also and above all for you, who had no personal motive and almost no right to such political statements, since you had never assumed political responsibility, and who put yourself in a position from your point of view that was hardly tenable. I was very saddened by this. [...] This alarm of yours among the teachers will certainly also upset the elementary school and awaken many suspicions, while most marched full of faith in our work, which everyone knew was inspired by a high and pure faith’6. The editorial that appeared in L’Educazione Nazionale did not only cause a souring of relations with one of the two masters of Italian idealism. Lombardo Radice was targeted by fascist publicists as a traitor. Particularly violent was the attack launched by the philosopher Giuseppe Saitta, a disciple of Gentile, who sent an open letter to the weekly magazine of the Fascio di combattimento Bolognese [Bolognese Fascist Group], in which he accused the pedagogist of being a wicked profiteer, who had grown fat on the back of Fascism, which he had then abandoned at the most opportune moment. The letter was published in L’Assalto on 25 October 1924 and was taken up in the following weeks by Il Popolo d’Italia, L’Idea Nazionale, Il Mondo, the Corriere della Sera and other national newspapers. This open letter was a hard blow for Lombardo Radice, as can be seen from a very long letter sent to Giuseppe Prezzolini on 31 October 1924, in which he dismantled one by one the infamous accusations levelled against him by Saitta and –​to exonerate himself from the accusation of having betrayed the fascist party –​wrote: ‘I was never a fascist. I was not involved as a fascist. I spoke out, and in the press, to Gentile when he went to be a minister. I was called despite that. I had my political papers in order. But since there were those who thought I was a fascist [...], I wanted to clear up the misunderstanding. I have never hidden my thoughts from anyone! I treated

Giuseppe Isnardi, Gaetano Piacentini and Giustino Fortunato. In general, for a reconstruction of ANIMI’s history, also with reference to its difficult relations with the fascist regime, see: Mattei 2012. 6 AsINDIRE, GLR, dep. 2003, CP, b. 40, folder ‘P.M.... 1924’, sub-​folder ‘Correspondence with Gentile on Fascism’.

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fascists and non-​fascists as equals. I forbade officials from engaging in politics; I threw out those who wanted to bend the school to politics; while being loyal to the government, which promised (and I hoped) legality and justice. I defended good officials harassed by the ras. I defended institutions (ask Rossi Doria). Woe if I had not been there. I can say this. [...] I did not and did prevent persecution’7. On this occasion too, Lombardo Radice received numerous letters of support, including one from Benedetto Croce, who expressed his ‘esteem in these days when you are the target of unjust and slanderous assaults’, knowing well ‘with what spirit you entered the Minerva, and with what spirit you left’8. In this phase, moreover, as Giuliano Campioni and Franco Lo Moro also noted (Campioni/​Lo Moro 1979), he progressively moved closer to Croce’s position, often reproaching  –​in the Cronache senza data [Undated Reports] published in L’Educazione Nazionale  –​his old friends for having betrayed liberalism by extrapolating appropriate quotations from some of their previous works. Nevertheless, Lombardo Radice did not sign the Manifesto degli intellettuali antifascisti [Manifesto of anti-​fascist intellectuals] drafted by Croce and published on 1 May 1925 in response to the Manifesto degli intellettuali fascisti [Manifesto of fascist intellectuals]9. In a heartfelt letter to Gentile’s wife, unsigned but datable to 1925, Lombardo Radice reiterated that he had never been a Fascist, that he did not share Gentile’s attitude towards Fascism and that he wanted to avoid any occasion for more serious dissent, pointing out that he had performed ‘the great sacrifice of not signing political documents that I felt it was my duty to sign’ as he did not want his name ‘to appear in expressions that could hurt him’10.

7 The letter is preserved in copy in: MuSEd, GLR, series ‘Corrispondenza generale’, folder ‘Giuseppe Prezzolini’. The original is kept in Giuseppe Prezzolini’s private archive in the Archivi di Cultura Contemporanea of the Biblioteca Cantonale in Lugano and is published in: Picco 1991, pp. 206–​207. 8 Cf. Letter from Benedetto Croce to Giuseppe Lombardo Radice dated 31 October 1924, in AsINDIRE, GLR, dep. 2003, CP, b. 40, folder ‘Lettere di varii... (1924)’, sub-​fasc. C. For the correspondence between the two, see: Colapietra 1968. 9 The manifesto was published in the newspaper Il Mondo on 1 May 1925; in addition to an initial list of signatories published on 1 May, ‘Il Mondo’ published two more substantial lists on 10 and 22 May. 10 Minute of letter from Giuseppe Lombardo Radice to Erminia Nudi (s.d., but 1925), in MuSEd, GLR, series ‘General Correspondence’, f. ‘Erminia Nudi’. In her testimony, her daughter Laura recalled: ‘Since there was no free culture, much of the culture took place at home. It so happened that my father and mother accustomed us from an early age to keeping secrets. When I was twelve, I already had one of the manifestos of the

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Regardless of his non-​adherence to the Benedetto Croce manifesto, however, Lombardo Radice was now considered an anti-​fascist intellectual, up to the highest level, due to the many stances he had publicly taken. This is evidenced by a telegram written in his own hand by Benito Mussolini to the General Consul in Lugano on 26 November 1925, which explained: ‘The Minister of Switzerland in Roma, Mr Vagnière11, has come to express his wish that the names of Italian collaborators should disappear from the periodical L’Adula12, because this gives rise to doubts and suspicions. [...] Giuseppe Prezzolini is a sceptic, Lombardo-​Radice is the classic traitor type. After June 1924 his attitude was simply disgraceful anti-​ fascism. [...] This being the case, it is a disgrace that such names are periodically printed on the masthead of a pro-​fascist newspaper that nobly defends the cause of Tessin’s Italian character. Please, therefore, call the editor of L’Adula; read her this letter and ask her to provide’13. The opinion expressed by Mussolini on Lombardo Radice (‘the classic traitor type’) is particularly interesting in that it further demonstrates how the Catanese pedagogist –​also due to his repeated public statements against the nascent regime  –​was considered up to the highest level to be a dangerous intellectual, even though he only became a person under ‘special political surveillance’ in 1927, when a dossier was officially opened in his name in the central political register14.

Lombardo Radice became a person under ‘special political surveillance’ The circumstances for subjecting Lombardo Radice to closer surveillance arose when he was invited to Switzerland –​where he had many long-​standing

11 12 1 3 14

anti-​fascist intellectuals in my hand, to take around to my father’s friends to get them to sign. We already had a great sense of responsibility’ (Lombardo Radice 1979, p. 165). Georges Wagnière (1862–​1948), Vice-​Chancellor of the Federal Chancellery of the Swiss Confederation from 1896 to 1902, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Switzerland in Roma from 1918 to 1935. On L’Adula, in particular, see: Crespi 2004. Mussolini’s autograph was auctioned by Libreria Antiquaria Pontremoli in Milan in 2010; the author has a digital reproduction. See Archivio Centrale dello Stato di Roma, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, Casellario Politico Centrale, box 2823, folder 9426 (henceforth: ACS, MI, DGPS, CPC, b. 2823, f. 9426). Lombardo Radice was classified there as an ‘anti-​fascist’.

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relations15  –​as part of the celebrations for the centenary of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s death. At the opening ceremony of the academic year 1926–​1927, he had delivered a long speech about the well-​known Zurich pedagogist (Lombardo Radice 1927b) and in the course of 1927 he made a significant contribution to relaunching the figure of Pestalozzi in Italy, because –​as Alberta Bergomi has well noted in a recent work –​Italian pedagogy had until then taken little interest in his thought, translating only his fundamental works and producing a modest number of ‘specialised studies, moreover, limited to the didactic aspects of his method’ and not including the theoretical aspects of his thought (Bergomi 2019, p. 93). Lombardo Radice, in fact, promoted through the journal L’Educazione Nazionale a series of lively miscellaneous volumes (Quaderni Pestalozziani), conceived precisely as a means of disseminating Pestalozzi’s pedagogical thought on the occasion of the centenary. The series consisted of a total of four volumes, to which –​among others –​Gino Ferretti, Guido De Ruggiero, Luigi Credaro, Ernesto Pelloni, Giovanni Vidari, Gemma Harasim, Antonio Banfi, Aurelio Covotti, Valeria Benetti-​Brunelli and Carlo Sganzini16 contributed. The heterogeneous philosophical background of the collaborators chosen by Lombardo Radice for this prestigious publishing operation was not fortuitous. The presence of Luigi Credaro and Giovanni Vidari –​ leading exponents of Herbartian anti-​idealism in the pedagogical field  –​is emblematic in this sense. Valeria Benetti Brunelli, who was lecturer in Pedagogy at the Regio Istituto Superiore di Magistero in Roma, was a disciple of an intellectual like Bernardino Varisco who, over the years, had progressively distanced himself from his initial pro-​positivist positions to move towards a spiritualist vision of existence, ending up representing –​as Alberto Barausse has well noted –​ ‘a sort of intellectual-​bridge between positivism and idealism’ (Barausse 2013, p. 627). Ernesto Pelloni, editor of L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana who was deeply linked to Lombardo Radice, had been a student of Credaro and Varisco at the Scuola Pedagogica [a course of specialisation for elementary school teachers] in Roma. Gino Ferretti and Guido De Ruggiero, again, were two exponents of idealism who had been strongly critical of Fascism from the outset and who

15 For a detailed reconstruction of Lombardo Radice’s cultural relations in Tessin as early as 1913, see: Scaglia 2020. 16 A brief presentation of the general structure and objectives of the ‘Quaderni Pestalozziani’ is offered by Lombardo Radice himself in his contribution Le onoranze italiane a G.E. Pestalozzi nel 1927 published at the beginning of the first issue (Il nostro Pestalozzi).

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would also progressively distance themselves from Gentile because of this. Lombardo Radice, in short, had gathered around his enterprise an extremely varied group of authors, deliberately equivocal in terms of philosophical affiliation, but characterised by a precise political orientation. The reasons for Lombardo Radice’s growing interest in Pestalozzi at this historical juncture were effectively summarised by Evelina Scaglia, who noted how: ‘The figure of Pestalozzi and the recovery of Pestalozzi’s roots in Tessin’s pedagogical tradition, which were also revived as a warning to recollection and regenerative action in times, such as those in Italy, characterised by fanaticism, violence and civil intolerance, contributed to opening up a further space for reflection on the valorisation of the Canton’s school experiences, both in terms of the centrality afforded to the spirit of the child in the educational problem, and the now consolidated didactic practice of a “poetic-​scientific study” of the local reality’ (Scaglia 2020, p. 67). The canton of Tessin in fact constituted a sort of pedagogical ‘free zone’ for Lombardo Radice in these years, within which –​without the ideological ballast that inevitably compromised his freedom of action within the national scholastic reality –​the theoretical principles that he had first expressed in his writings and then tried to implement through an organic reform of the scholastic programmes could find concrete application. However, the regime feared the possible repercussions it might suffer from this tenacious opponent on the pedagogical front regaining some margin of independence. And so it subjected him to increasingly intense control. In April 1927 the Royal Commissioner of the Regio Istituto Superiore di Magistero in Roma, Giuseppe Cardinali, informed the Police Commissioner of Roma that the Catanian pedagogist had ‘taken an interest in the recurring Pestalozzian centenary’ that year with various notable scientific publications and had ‘applied for a passport to Switzerland with the intention of visiting the educational exhibitions, in order to draw from them the lessons of the course he gives about Pestalozzi’, finally adding that he would be ‘one of the speakers who will speak about the school reform at the Pedagogical Congress in Locarno, designated for this by his didactic work for the implementation of the reform itself ’ and that therefore it was considered necessary to report the purpose of his trip to the public security authorities17.

17 Minute of letter from R. Commissario del R. Istituto Superiore di Magistero of Roma to the Police Commissioner of Roma, 5 April 1927, in Archivio storico dell’Università ‘La Sapienza’ di Roma, Fascicoli del personale insegnante [Folders of the professors], folder of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice (henceforth: AUSR, FPI, f. GLR).

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This report immediately set the Fascist repressive machine in motion. The Roma Police Headquarters forwarded Cardinali’s letter to the Direzione Generale della Pubblica Sicurezza [General Directorate of Public Security] and on 10 April 1927, the Chief of Police sent a written note to the Cabinet of the Undersecretary of State for the Interior stating that the Minister of Education, Pietro Fedele, had expressed his opposition to the issuance of a passport to travel to Switzerland18. It was thus that Lombardo Radice was not issued a passport and was subjected to surveillance to prevent him from clandestinely emigrating. Lombardo Radice –​informed of the measures taken against him –​petitioned the Direttore generale della Pubblica Sicurezza on 21 March 1927 for an immediate end to the strict surveillance measures to which he had been subjected. The pedagogist professed himself to be a ‘good citizen, a correct official’ and said it was ‘supremely painful and mortifying’ for him to see himself ‘tailed as if he were able to go abroad against the will of the government and in fraud of the law’19. On 30 April 1927, the Chief of Police wrote to the Head of the Cabinet of the Minister of the Interior stating that he believed that the surveillance ordered against Lombardo Radice could be lifted, adding that Senator Giovanni Gentile had also expressed his favourable opinion to this effect20. Nonetheless, the Head of the Cabinet of the Minister of the Interior replied on 13 May 1927, stating that ‘in view of Prof. Lombardo Radice’s record’ he ordered the continuation of the ‘surveillance ordered against him, exercising it, however, in a way that was not too evident’21. In the end, no official Italian delegation took part in the centenary celebrations of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’ s death (Ravà 1927). Lombardo Radice  –​ who was constantly under surveillance by the fascist police –​could not even take part in the 4th Congress of the Ligue Internationale pour l’Éducation Nouvelle (LIEN) that took place in Locarno from 3 to 15 August 1927, also because of the violent press campaign unleashed against him by the Tessin socialists, who accused him of being in reality –​together with Gentile –​‘two filthy spies who in Locarno would monitor on behalf of Mussolini’s government the political

18 See Memo No. 05572 of the Chief of Police to the Cabinet of the Undersecretary of State for the Interior of 10 April 1927, in ACS, MI, DGPS, CPC, b. 2823, fasc. 9426. 19 Typewritten copy of the letter from G. Lombardo Radice to the General Director of Public Security dated 21 March 1927, in ACS, MI, DGPS, CPC, b. 2823, fasc. 9426. 20 Memo No. 09558 of the Chief of Police for the Head of the Cabinet of the Minister of the Interior of 30 April 1927, in ACS, MI, DGPS, CPC, b. 2823, fasc. 9426. 21 Ibid.

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conduct of the Italian scholars who would speak at that congress’, on the basis of whose denunciations the fascists would then proceed to purge their opponents ‘from universities, high schools, and elementary schools’ (Libera Stampa, 22 February 1927, p. 2). Lombardo Radice –​caught between two fires –​was forced to withdraw from taking part in the Locarno congress. He sent a letter to the Tessin liberal periodical La Scuola, which had defended him against the attacks of the socialists, in which he denounced the violent defamatory campaign launched against him by some Tessin newspapers and stated that he had understood that they wanted to take the opportunity of his participation in the congress to violently attack the Italian school reform for purely political reasons, preferring to avoid confrontation rather than lend themselves to polemics (Lombardo Radice 1927, p. 275)22. The real reasons for Minister Gentile’s former Direttore generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare’s absence from the Locarno conference, however, were to be found in the deep apprehension aroused in him by the continuation of the restrictive measures taken against him by the Fascist police, as he himself had confided to the philosopher Mario Manlio Rossi23. On 28 September 1927, Lombardo Radice wrote to the Director General of Public Security to present his case to him. Lombardo Radice complained about the reinstatement of the ‘planting and tailing service already ordered last March

22 Keep in mind how in fact Lombardo Radice had been recognised by Adolphe Ferrière himself –​among the most distinguished founders of LIEN –​as one of the pioneers of ‘new education’ in Italy, to whom the journal Pour l’ère nouvelle had devoted a monographic issue the year before (no. 23, November 1926), that would later be published in a volume with the title: L’aube de l’école sereine en Italie: monographies d’éducation nouvelle, edited by Ferrière in 1927. On the relations between Lombardo Radice and Ferrière, see the recent: D’Aprile 2019. 23 On 19 September 1927 Rossi wrote to Lombardo Radice to enquire about the real reasons for his absence from the Locarno congress, as he had attended it as editor in charge of writing a detailed scientific report for the Rivista di Psicologia, hearing there that É. Claparède, P. Bovet, B. Ensor and others ‘laid the blame for it on the Italians and the government’, while Lombardo Radice had justified himself on the grounds of the violent undermining campaign by the ‘Free Press’ (cfr. MuSEd, GLR, series ‘General Correspondence’, folder ‘Mario Manlio Rossi’). We do not have Lombardo Radice’s reply, but he must have told him confidentially of the vigilance to which he was subjected, as in a subsequent letter of 23 September 1927, Rossi wrote to Lombardo Radice: ‘I well understood that this was the real reason for your absence –​for you have never missed a battle. But, of course, it cannot be said...’. (Ibid.). On Rossi’ s scientific account, more specifically, see: Trombetta 2016, pp. 142–​146.

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and ceased in June’ and added: ‘I do not know how it originated, although I can suppose that it must have arisen either from erroneous information provided about me by people who give vent to their scientific and professional antipathies by casting suspicions and calumnies on me, or ‒ and even this would not be unlikely ‒ from some misunderstanding arising from homonymy (I have been the victim of this elsewhere). What is certain is that I live in the most religious recollection of studies and family and that I do absolutely nothing that could cast the slightest shadow; on the contrary, I work, like few in Italy ‒ and I can say this with my head held high ‒ for the good of my country, as a civil official, as an educator, as a writer of pedagogical things’24. Lombardo Radice went on to note that he was among the few ‘who succeeded in making known the value and beauty of the Italian school reform, procuring my country great and significant public demonstrations of sympathy’ abroad, and that he was even for this reason recently attacked by a Tessin newspaper ‘precisely because of my propaganda for the Italian school reform’25. A few days later, Lombardo Radice would prepare a more meticulous defence memorandum, a ‘first handful of notes to judge the propaganda [he] made abroad’26, in which he reported on the consultancy he had undertaken for Henri Goy during the compilation of his study on Italian school policy (Goy 1926a, 1926b), to Piero Rebora for a series of ‘articles on the Italian school reform, glorifying its spirit, in English magazines read throughout the Anglo-​Saxon world’ (Rebora 1925), to the American pedagogist Angelo Patri during his stay in Italy to study the school reform27, to the German ministerial official Otto Karstädt (1924) and others, and then went on to illustrate the work he had carried out in Tessin –​with the support of Teresa Bontempi, Maria Boschetti Alberti, Francesco Chiesa and Ernesto Pelloni –​to ‘vigorously oppose the Italian method to foreign pedagogical approaches’ and thus support the Tessin nationalist movement ‘in the very vital field of education’28. The Catanian pedagogist further specified:  ‘Prof. L.R., asked to go to Switzerland for the Pedagogical Congress in 24 Letter from G. Lombardo Radice to the General Director of Public Security of 28 September 1927, in ACS, MI, DGPS, CPC, b. 2823, fasc. 9426. 25 Ibid. 26 More generally, on the subject of the reception of the Gentile Reform abroad, see: Charnitzky 1997. 27 A detailed account of this experience is published in: Pepe/​Wallace 2006. 28 Memo by G. Lombardo Radice for the General Director of Public Security dated 12 October 1927, in ACS, MI, DGPS, CPC, b. 2823, fasc. 9426, c. 3. The memorandum consists of 13 papers.

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Lugano (August 1927), for which he had been appointed speaker for a joint session, concealed the fact that he had not obtained a passport and let it be believed that he was not going there out of delicacy, wishing to avoid the Congress being disturbed by inappropriate discussions, since some former subjects, including Tonello29, had printed insults against Prof. L.R. announcing that they would not let him speak at the Congress. He thus preferred to pass himself off as a coward who was running away from a confrontation with Tonello, in order to keep quiet about the inexplicable refusal of his passport, which would have been the occasion for unsavoury comments’30. Lombardo Radice closed his defence note by declaring himself convinced that he had demonstrated his inability to participate and saying he was confident that the authorities would soon lift the measures against him. As Gentile had already done in April31, influential friends intervened in support of the revision petition presented by the pedagogist, including the historian Gioacchino Volpe, who announced in a letter of 31 October 1927: ‘Dear friend, I put myself in your shoes and I understand. I spoke on Saturday with Bocchini32 [...] and he gave me good assurances regarding your guardian angels. He asked me if I vouched for you. Ten times, I replied. So, this hassle I hope is taken away from you’33. Friends’ intercessions with the authorities achieved, only partly, the desired effect. On 19 November 1927, the Undersecretary of State Giacomo Suardo ordered ‘a general, but strict surveillance’34. The severe persecution he suffered for political reasons prostrated Lombardo Radice, as can be seen from a letter he sent to Giuseppe Prezzolini on 28 April 1928, in which he wrote: ‘I defend myself against myself, I lecture with a great effort of will; I still succeed, and this gives me hope. When a soul full of healthy

29 Reference is made here to Angelo Tonello, a former socialist deputy, exiled to Switzerland, and contributor to the Libera Stampa. 30 Ibid., cc. 5–​6. 31 See Memo No. 09558 of 30 April 1927, cit. 32 Reference is made here to Arturo Bocchini, General Director of Public Security at the Ministry of the Interior and Chief of Police from 13 September 1926 to 20 November 1940. 33 Letter from Gioacchino Volpe to G. Lombardo Radice dated 31 October 1927, in MuSEd, GLR, series ‘General Correspondence’, folder ‘Gioacchino Volpe’. 34 See Memo No. 441/​022083 of the Chief of Police for the Chief of the Cabinet of the Minister of the Interior of 14 October 1927, in ACS, MI, DGPS, CPC, b. 2823, f. 9426. The Chief of the Cabinet’s reply, dated 19 November 1927, can be found on the same sheet of the memo.

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optimism and will to educate, as mine has always been, feels powerless to act for what it believes to be right, isolated, boycotted, unable to make its best impulses count for anything; when a father like me sees a false school for his children and foresees a dark future for them, because they are good and educated to recollection and repugnance to all rhetoric and falsehood (if you only knew what a school they have now!); in short, when someone like me, full of impulses and faith, feels like a failure, it is no wonder that he has some periods of neglect of everything, even of friends’35. Police surveillance, meanwhile, continued to be exercised, albeit in a more discreet form than in the recent past. Still in the summer of 1929, the Regia Prefettura di Lucca ordered surveillance of Lombardo Radice during his stay in the area between Pietrasanta, Montecatini and Barga until the end of September, when he would return to Roma36. The following years were to prove very complex for Lombardo Radice. In spite of this, however, the Catanese pedagogist did not lose heart and decided that he could still ‘work for Italians under fifteen’, even if he had to submit to the blackmail of a brutal and ruthless regime. This is confirmed, paradoxically, by the oath he took on 25 November 1931 in the presence of the jurist Edoardo Tommasone, the new director of the Regio Istituto Superiore di Magistero in Roma, with the formula already modified according to the provisions of Article 6 of Royal Decree-​Law No. 1176 of 3 July 1930 and Article 18 of Royal Decree-​Law No. 1227 of 28 August 1931. The new formula was that university professors were no longer required to swear loyalty to the King and loyally observe the Statute and other laws of the State, but also to swear loyalty to the Fascist Regime, exercising the office of professor ‘with the aim of training hard-​working, proactive and devoted citizens to the Fatherland and the Fascist Regime’37. Lombardo Radice had already taken the oath on 7 February 1927 in the presence of Giuseppe Cardinali, commissioner of the Regio Istituto Superiore di Magistero, with the previous formula, but he was forced to take it again. He had to come to terms with his conscience and accept a compromise, not so much to keep his university chair –​which had been taken away in the same weeks from his Roman colleagues Gaetano De Sanctis and Giorgio Levi Della Vida, who had been released

35 The letter is preserved in copy in: MuSEd, GLR, series ‘General Correspondence’, folder ‘Giuseppe Prezzolini’. 36 See ACS, MI, DGPS, CPC, b. 2823, f. 9426. 37 See Minutes of the oath of G. Lombardo Radice on 25 November 1931, in AUSR, FPI, fasc. GLR.

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from service precisely because of their refusal to take the oath –​as to be able to continue to fight the spread of Fascist culture from within the university system, as Guido De Ruggiero, Adolfo Omodeo, Federico Chabod, Arturo Carlo Jemolo and Piero Calamandrei would also choose to do38.

References Barausse, A. (2013): ‘Bernardino Varisco’. In: Chiosso, G./​Sani, R. (eds.): Dizionario biografico dell’educazione, 1800–​2000. Milano, p. 627. Bergomi, A. (2019): Ernesto Codignola con Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi: un percorso tormentato tra fascismo e democrazia. In: CQIA rivista –​Formazione, lavoro, persona 9(28), pp. 93–​102. Campioni, G./​Lo Moro, F. (1979): Che dolore l’iscrizione di Gentile al fascismo… In: Rinascita 16, pp. 22–​23. Cantatore, L. (2013):  ‘Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’. In:  Chiosso G./​ Sani R. (eds.): Dizionario biografico dell’educazione, 1800–​2000. Milano, pp. 43–​45. Cavallera, H.A. (1997): Giovanni Gentile e Giuseppe Lombardo-​Radice: i paradigmi della pedagogia. In: Spadafora, G. (ed.): Giovanni Gentile: la pedagogia, la scuola. Atti del convegno (Catania, 12–​13–​14 dicembre 1994) e altri studi. Roma, pp. 427–​459. Charnitzky, J. (1997): Il dibattito critico sulla riforma Gentile in Italia e all’estero. In: Spadafora, G. (ed.): Giovanni Gentile: la pedagogia, la scuola. Atti del convegno (Catania, 12–​13–​14 dicembre 1994) e altri studi. Roma, pp. 341–​367. Cives, G. (1983): Attivismo e antifascismo in Giuseppe Lombardo Radice: critica didattica o didattica critica?. Firenze. Colapietra, R. (1968): Lettere inedite di Benedetto Croce a Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. In: Il Ponte 24(8), pp. 976–​997. Crespi, F. (2004): Ticino irredento. La frontiera contesa: dalla battaglia culturale dell’Adula ai piani d’invasione. Milano. D’Aprile, G. (2019): Memorie di una inedita corrispondenza: lettere di Giuseppe Lombardo Radice ad Adolphe Ferrière. Pisa. Ferrière, A. (ed.) (1927): L’aube de l’école sereine en Italie: monographies d’éducation nouvelle. Paris.

38 The German historian Helmut Goetz has effectively recorded the conflicting feelings of anti-​fascist teachers forced to swear their allegiance to the regime, revealing often unpublished implications. Referring to Lombardo Radice, for example, he described him ‘with a thick white beard wet with tears’ as he turned to his colleague De Sanctis to justify his choice (Goetz 2000, p. 164).

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Gentili, R. (1967):  Riforma e controriforma della scuola. In:  Scuola e Città 4, pp.  73–​88. Goetz, H. (2000): Il giuramento rifiutato: i docenti universitari e il regime fascista. Firenze. Goy, H. (1926a):  La Politique scolaire de la Nouvelle Italie. Thèse présentée à la Faculté des Lettres de l’Université de Paris. Paris. Goy, H. (1926b): Nouveau Code de l’enseignement primaire italien. Paris. Karstädt, O. (1924): Der Neubau der italienischen Schule. In: Pädagogisches Zentralblatt 4, pp. 401–​410. Libera Stampa, 22 febbraio 1927. Lombardo Radice Ingrao, L. (1979):  Sono una Lombardo Radice… In:  Gerosa, G.: Le compagne. Milano, pp. 165–​167. Lombardo Radice, G. (1924): Accanto ai maestri. In: L’Educazione Nazionale 6(1), pp.  2–​5. Lombardo Radice, G. (1927a): A proposito del Congresso pedagogico di Locarno. In: L’Educazione Nazionale 5, p. 275. Lombardo Radice, G. (1927b): Il nostro Pestalozzi, estratto dall’Annuario del R. Istituto Superiore di Magistero di Roma per l’anno accademico 1926–​1927. Roma. Mattei, F. (2012): ANIMI: il contributo dell’Associazione nazionale per gli interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia alla storia dell’educazione (1910–​1945). Roma. Mazzetti, R. (1958): Giuseppe Lombardo Radice tra l’idealismo pedagogico e Maria Montessori. Bologna. Pepe, G./​Wallace, J. (2006): The Promise of Italian Progressivism: Patri Visits Italy in 1927. In: Wallace J.M. (ed.): The Promise of Progressivism: Angelo Patri and Urban Education. New York, pp. 67–​77. Picco, I. (1991): Militanti dell’ideale. Giuseppe Lombardo-​Radice e Giuseppe Prezzolini: lettere, 1908–​1938. Locarno. Ravà, A. (1927): Il centenario di Pestalozzi a Brugg. In: Rivista pedagogica 20(3), pp. 241–​246. Rebora, P. (1925): Educational reforms in Italy. In: Hearnshaw F.J.C. (ed.): Educational Advancement Abroad. London, pp. 135–​151. Scaglia, E. (2020): La ‘pedagogia serena’ di Giuseppe Lombardo Radice fra le pagine de ‘L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana’: dalle ‘Lezioni di didattica’ a ‘Pedagogia di apostoli e di operai’ (1913–​1936). In: CQIA rivista –​Formazione, lavoro, persona 10(32), pp. 45–​83. Trombetta, C. (2016): Edouard Claparède e la cultura italiana. Ariccia.

Paolo Alfieri

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and physical education in elementary schools Abstract

This essay examines Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s contribution to the debate and school regulations regarding Physical Education in Italian elementary schools in the period in which he elaborated his reflections on the teaching of this discipline, that is, from 1913, when his Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale [Lessons in Didactics and Memoirs of Teaching Life] was published, to 1923, the year in which he wrote the programmes for elementary education in the context of the Gentile school reform. The text documents how Lombardo-​Radice’s proposal for physical activities in the elementary curriculum asserted the educability of the body through an alternative pedagogical theory to positivism, expressed an original reinterpretation of the didactic orientation relating to play that had arisen in the late 19th century and was in tune with a democratic conception of national education. Keywords: Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, Physical Education, primary school, Italy, 20th century

The originality of Lombardo Radice’s contribution to physical education in Italian elementary schools The section Giuseppe Lombardo Radice dedicated to physical education in his well-​known 1913 volume Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale formed part of the debate that surrounded this discipline in Italian elementary schools, offering an innovative contribution in terms of both pedagogical theory and teaching methodology. On the first front, the author dealt with the question of the educability of the body from the point of view of neo-​idealism, opposing positivism –​and especially evolutionism –​which had held undisputed sway over the issue since the late 19th century. On the second front, Lombardo Radice’s work expressed an original position with respect to the two main methodological orientations that had competed with one another since the 1878 law that has made physical activity compulsory in Italian elementary schools: the gymnastic approach and the recreational approach (Alfieri 2020, pp. 19–​120). He, in fact, elaborated a reinterpretation of the recreational approach, which had failed to take root in Italian

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school culture even after the 1893 ministerial programmes of physical education had officially established the primacy of games over methodical gymnastic exercises, in clear contrast to the 1878 and 1886 programmes. The two didactic models presented themselves as alternatives, especially in light of the different role attributed to the teacher in each didactic scenario. In lessons centred on gymnastics, the schoolchildren’s movements were directed by the teacher, who was called upon to master above all competence in command of the activity, which, as the specialised manuals suggested, allowed him to stand as the reference point for the physical activity being performed collectively by the entire group of schoolchildren (Alfieri 2013). By contrast, lessons centred on playful activities ‒ and especially on the group activities advocated by the 1893 programmes ‒ were based on bodily movements that were not guided by the teacher’s commands but by the internal rules of the games themselves, which thus became ‘in their own way bearers of a democratic instance’ (Morandi 2015, p. 30). The recreational orientation therefore also expressed a vision of social relations that was opposite to the one expressed by the gymnastic orientation. It has, in fact, been noted that the debate around physical education in liberal Italy and its influence on the coeval ministerial regulations implied ‘a theory of the ideological apparatus of the state’ (Stewart-​Steinberg 2011, p. 186): on the one hand gymnastics being a means of directing the processes of political socialisation from above, on the other, games representing an opportunity to foster freer interaction between individuals within a peer group. These political-​educational implications underlying the methods of teaching physical activities were also reinterpreted by Lombardo Radice from a new angle, namely within his broader reflection on elementary school’s tasks in relation to Nation Building. In fact, Lombardo Radice’s reflections on this subject ‒ deve-​ loped above all in the aftermath of the First World War ‒ also had important repercussions for his conception of physical education, as documented by the regulations on the teaching of this discipline contained in the elementary school programmes he drew up in 1923.

The Lezioni di didattica of 1913 The intention of Lezioni di didattica to oppose, across the board, the hegemony of positivism in the scholastic world is very evident in the section of the book dedicated to physical education. In tune with the thinking of his mentor, the famous philosopher Giovanni Gentile, leader of Italian neo-​idealism, Lombardo Radice stated:  ‘It is the spirit that manufactures the body; that bends it to its

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instrument; that reduces it to its friend, to an accomplice of the good that it wants and seeks’; for this reason, physical education should not make one ‘think of breeding, of training, of the body’, since it had its ‘raison d’être as spiritual education’, that is, as ‘a form of self-​education’ (Lombardo Radice 1917, p. 373). Hence the questioning of Juvenal’s famous motto ‘mens sana in corpore sano’, which evolutionary pedagogy interpreted as an expression of the direct influence of bodily exercise on the individual’s processes of intellectual and moral formation. This physio-​psychological conception of physical activities was developed, for example, in Linee di pedagogia elementare [Lines of Elementary Education], the text by Saverio De Dominicis published in 1897–​1898, that by the early 20th century was becoming the most widespread pedagogical manual in Italian scuole normali. In De Dominicis’s educational-​didactic proposal, based on the principle of ‘physiological education’, physical education not only preceded intellectual and moral education, but ‘animated’ them from within. According to the author, in fact, the exercise of the body was a ‘capital of intelligence and will’, which had to underpin, as a driving force, all cognitive and moral learning (De Dominicis 1922, pp. 234–​235). According to Lombardo Radice, on the other hand, it was ethical-​spiritual education that procured physical well-​being and not the reverse, so much so that he went so far as to propose a radical reinterpretation of Juvenal’s motto: ‘corpus sanum e mente sana’ (1917, p. 374). However, if this subjective view of the body fitted in well with Gentile’s non-​naturalistic anthropology, it is also true that Lombardo Radice’s reflection on physical education deviated from that of his mentor. Whereas in Gentile’s thought ‘the reduction of the body to pure spirituality’ ended up ‘annull[ing] physical education in the ethics of knowledge, so much to sublimate it as to destroy it’ (Mazzetti 1958, pp. 217–​224), in Lombardo Radice’s thinking, scholastic physical exercise enjoyed wider margins of autonomy. This autonomy was su-​ stained by the ‘methodological reading’ of Gentile’s neo-​idealism that ran through Lezioni di didattica, that is, by the bending in a realist sense of that philoso-​ phical doctrine, ‘understood not as metaphysics, but as a method of thinking and operating’ (Cives 2014, p. 203). This allowed Lombardo Radice to formulate a pedagogical proposal in which the body and its educability also received specific recognition, so much so that its teaching merited distinct didactic attention in elementary schools. The first didactic consequence that the author drew from his idea of ‘conceiving the body and physical health as derived from the spirit and spiritual health’ was the rejection of both the ‘grammar of movements’, based on the metho-​ dical training of individual parts of the body, and of ‘medical gymnastics’, which claimed to procure health on physiological grounds alone. In place of these two

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forms of gymnastics were to be proposed ‘walks, regulated by hygienic rules’ and ‘all other exercises that aim[ed] at the acquisition of a temperament of our body’ that derived ‘from essentially spiritual qualities’, such as ‘strength, calm, serene vigour, a sense of living, joy of living, the need to live without conflict between our spirit and our organs’ (Lombardo Radice 1917, pp. 376–​377). Although Lombardo Radice did not specify what these latter exercises were, he leaned towards the ludic approach to physical education, as can be deduced from the educational-​didactic perspective of ‘giuoco consaputo’ (‘conscious play’, that is to say a game closely related to children’s awareness) which, according to him, should inform, as a whole, the teaching of that discipline in elementary school: ‘There is, therefore, something higher in the school than play ‒ which is spontaneous gymnastics for children; but something that begins with play, which is indeed play for spontaneity, but conscious, intentional play, sought after as a means of our organic and moral elevation, as an expression of the art of making a body, no different in value from the art of drawing, speaking, counting and working with numbers, etc. etc’. (ibid., p. 377). In short, play made it possible to hold together the demands of moral education and the exaltation of children’s expressiveness, pillars on which the educational vocation that Lombardo Radice attributed to elementary schools was to be based. On the first front, the valuing of the ludic dimension was linked to the previously mentioned concept of self-​education, which Lombardo Radice considered ‘the only form of guarantee so that the moral sense [was] made one’s own and really experienced by schoolchildren’ (Chiosso 2019, p. 125). In fact, play, rather than methodical gymnastic exercises led by the teacher, would allow children to directly experience rules and internalise them, since –​as the opening of the first chapter of Lezioni di didattica stated –​it was ‘vain to search for and determine external means for so-​called school discipline’ (Lombardo Radice 1917, p. 13). Playful activity, therefore, possessed its own regulating function, which, drawing nourishment from ‘internal peace, savoured by the effort known to have been made, by the victory achieved over [his] weaknesses and laziness’, had the merit of developing in the pupil ‘the full awareness’ of the ‘value of the exercise’, so that they, ‘even alone, know[s] how to and wish[es] to repeat it’ (ibid., p. 377). On the second side, the formative significance of playful activity was justified, in a neo-​idealistic key, as a manifestation of children’s interiority. But, here too, Lombardo Radice went beyond Gentile’s theory. In fact, in overcoming the unitary conception of teacher and pupil postulated by Gentile, Lombardo Radice’s pedagogical proposal recognised in the child an ‘inexhaustible indivi-​ duality’ (Cives 2014, p. 207), which play was able to reveal in the manifestation of spontaneity. From this point of view, one can also understand the educational

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advantages that Lombardo Radice identified in the ‘ingenious occupations of the mind’, which he recommended coupling ‘with physical education exercises’: ‘open-​air schools, school colonies, class-​promenades, boy explorers’ (1917, p. 379). These activities too, suggested and illustrated by the author as teaching aids for intuitive teaching, were based on the ‘most active participation of the pupil’ (ibid., p. 178). Although Lombardo Radice did not make this explicit in the section on phy-​ sical education, his predilection for the playful orientation was consistent with the more general conception of the teacher-​pupil relationship that emerged from Lezioni di didattica. If, as already mentioned, the author did not resolve this relationship in an identification between the two figures, he defined it in terms of an ‘interpenetration of souls’, in which a balance was achieved between the teacher’s authority and the pupil’s free initiative. Therefore, by virtue of its simultaneously normative and expressive potential, play represented one of the most suitable contexts for overcoming the antinomy between ‘severity and gentleness’, ‘punishment and reward’, which Lombardo Radice considered irrational and abstract if they remained ‘something external and therefore arbitrary’ (ibid., p. 15), as was the case in the directive methodology of gymnastics.

The question of national education and the Ente Nazionale per l’Educazione Fisica The innovative scope of the Lezioni di didattica, and especially that concerning physical education, failed to be understood and accepted in Italian teaching culture in the years immediately following its publication. Refuting the physio-​ psychological conception of physical activities could not easily make its way into the training of future teachers, which remained heavily indebted to evolutionary positivism. Suffice it to recall that De Dominicis’ aforementioned manual of peda-​ gogy would reach its twenty-​third edition in 1922. Even less successful among teachers was the questioning of methodical exercises, which Lombardo Radice included in his critica didattica, whereby teaching had to eschew the use of standardised methodologies (Cives 1983, pp. 17–​39), such as those suggested by gymnastics manuals. Among these, the text La ginnastica italiana [Italian Gymnastics] by the famous teacher, physician and gymnasiarch Emilio Baumann, published in 1907, deserves mention. In it, he went so far as to claim that ‘among school subjects, the most scholastic of all [was] gymnastics’ because, Baumann wrote, ‘the indispensable condition for the exi-​ stence of a school is that the pupils obey the teacher, that is, that discipline reigns supreme’ (1907, pp. 22–​23). For this reason, the manual emphasised above all the

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importance of the directive role of the teacher, who was called upon to dominate the teaching setting from a position in which ‘he could comfortably see and supervise the schoolchildren’, while he resolutely issued the gymnastic commands (ibid., p. 191). The enthusiastic reception that Baumann’s manual received –​it would be reprinted for the tenth time in 1922  –​attests to how the gymnastic methodological tradition, with its didactic proposal based on routine and directions issued by the teacher, continued to prevail over the playful approach. It is also true, however, that in the second decade of the 20th century Lombardo Radice’s voice did not go unheard in the intellectual debate on schools, and especially at the end of the First World War, when the question of the relationship between teaching and national education, that had been open since the beginning of the century, acquired greater resonance. Riding the wave of the prominence gained in that period by the neo-​idealists gathered around Gentile, Lombardo Radice too was able to distinguish himself by contributing to the discussion on the urgency of promoting, through schools, a patriotic spirit in the younger generations (Chiosso 1983). It was above all his text of 1916, L’ideale educativo e la scuola nazionale [The Educational Ideal and the National School], that dealt with this theme, expressing an idea of the nation in which ‘Gentile’s ideas (the nation as a cultural and spiritual experience) and democratic instances (the nation as a synthesis of different memberships) were intertwined’ (Chiosso 2019, p. 134). In this light, it is also possible to unravel an important historiographical knot, namely the different treatment reserved for physical activity in elementary schools compared to that provided for secondary schools in the well-​known school reform of 1923, that was promoted by Gentile after his appointment as Minister of Education in the first Mussolini government. Many studies have focused on the creation of the Ente Nazionale per l’Educazione Fisica (ENEF, National Board of Physical Education), to which Gentile entrusted the entire management of the teaching of that discipline in secondary schools. It has first of all been observed that Gentile’s choice to remove physical exercises for se-​ condary school students from the school context conflicted with the principle of the unity of education expressed in the minister’s philosophical doctrine (Di Donato 1984, pp. 188–​189; Ferrara 1992, pp. 218–​219); in a well-​known lecture to teachers in Trieste, it was Gentile himself who had affirmed: ‘Physical education is not an addition to the education of the spirit: it is also education of the spirit’ (1920, p. 210). This contradiction has been justified by other scholars in the light of one of the intentions behind the 1923 school reform, namely the containment of public expenditure:  by renouncing the direct management of physical education for

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secondary schools and thus also relieving itself of the burden of providing for the salaries of its teachers, the Ministry would have enjoyed some budgetary relief (Charnitzky 2001, pp. 124–​125; Ponzio 2009, pp. 20–​25). We have not so far reflected on the fact that physical activity in elementary schools was not entrusted to ENEF and its specialised personnel. Among the various reasons that could explain this choice, one can be related precisely to the democratic issues that ran through the political-​pedagogical discourse on national education developed by Lombardo Radice, who was also involved in the work of the Italian School System Reform of 1923 as Direttore generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare at the Ministry. This discourse deviated from the authoritarian accents of Gentile’s perspective:  like his mentor, for Lombardo Radice, ‘without order and discipline there could be no consciousness of the Nation and no sense of the State’, but, for him, ‘instead of being imposed from above, these attitudes had to be mobilised from below’ (Chiosso 2019, p. 139). For this reason, physical exercises led by an élite of experts from outside the school –​as was envisaged for ENEF –​had no place in the elementary curriculum reformed by Lombardo Radice. In L’ideale educativo e la scuola nazionale there was no mention of physical education. However, the pedagogical spirit that permeated that text allows us to better frame what Lombardo Radice would prescribe in the 1923 programmes for the teaching of this discipline in elementary schools, refining the reflections he had already elaborated on this subject in Lezioni di didattica.

The physical education programmes of 1923 There were two directions in which Lombardo Radice’s educational proposal on physical education moved in the 1923 programmes: a confirmation of its ludic orientation and a clearer definition of the role that the teacher was to assume during play. The didactic indications relating to physical activity referred to a specific previous regulation: ‘For physical education the programme approved by Royal Decree of 26 November 1893 is confirmed until legally superseded by an alternative’ (Programmi 1923, p. 337). That ‘until legally superseded by an alternative’ may lead one to suppose that Lombardo Radice was planning to prepare a new rule for school physical exercises, perhaps with the aim of overcoming the positivistic substratum of the previous programmes. But, at that time, the 1893 ministerial prescriptions were closest to Lombardo Radice’s intentions not only because, as mentioned, they had affirmed the centrality of play, but also because they had criticised the artificiality of methodical gymnastics. In fact, a warning in the

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1923 programmes is worthy of note: teachers were asked to ‘banish the choreographic forms of gymnastics’ and to teach only ‘a few, very simple exercises’ in order to achieve, in ‘a couple of rehearsals’, ‘synchronicity and symmetry of movements’ for all classes, and thus ‘to obtain the beautiful effect of the public’ since ‒ it was specified ‒ ‘it is good that they have the small army of pupils under their eyes from time to time’ (ibidem). As in the 1893 programmes, Lombardo Radice did not completely exclude collective gymnastic exercises, in which, however, he did not recognise an edu-​ cational value attributable to physical activity in itself. As is clearly noted in the aforementioned warning, gymnastics recitals were permitted by the 1923 regulations not so much for the benefit of schoolchildren, but with the aim of keeping alive the sense of patriotic belonging in the watching public. The allusion to the army was not, therefore, associated with the traditional pre-​military aims or conformist objectives attributed to gymnastics, but with an image of the armed forces to which Lombardo Radice assigned the task of helping to build the feeling of a national community in which the ‘historical fences between the different social classes’ could be overcome (Chiosso 1983, p. 110). It should also be noted that the spirit in which the 1923 programmes intended gymnastic displays deviated from that of the new rituals that had been introduced in elementary schools in 1922. On the initiative of Dario Lupi, undersecretary at the Ministry of Education and a fascist from the beginning, schoolchildren were expected to participate in a series of celebrations, such as those held in parks or avenues of remembrance to commemorate the fallen of the First World War or at the planting of trees or the placement of plaques in honour of fascists who had died in the fight against Bolshevism, up to the compulsory Roman salute to the flag (Charnitzky 2001, pp. 184–​185). These liturgies, which were increasingly ideologically connoted, expressed the regime’s incipient intention to elaborate a political religion whereby the spirit of common patriotic belonging was to be transformed, from childhood onwards, into a real ‘collective harmony’ that was rigidly organised and externally directed by the party (Gentile 2001, p. 52). This was a project far removed from what Lombardo Radice had written in L’ideale educativo e la scuola nazionale:  ‘The worthiest social and national life is not oppression, but the integration of free individuality’ (1961, p. 124). The playful orientation expressed by the reference to the 1893 programmes assumed, therefore, also a political meaning, which, to quote Lombardo Radice again, was well within the perspective of ‘a self-​education of the individual that [had] its reality in the spontaneous collaboration with other individuals’, as well as within

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the perspective of a ‘national education’ that had to ‘maintain’ a ‘good restlessness, creating for all free spirits the basis of their action’ (ibid., pp. 108–​109; p. 129). It is not surprising, therefore, that in elucidating the aims that play could achieve, in addition to those connected with ‘care for cleanliness, health, elasticity of the body’, the 1923 didactic programmes on physical education insisted above all on those that had to do with social relations between pupils: ‘individual and hierarchical discipline’; ‘gradual, severe and continuous preparation for the effort’; ‘readiness to help the weaker; spirit of sacrifice to make the smaller or less right-​handed enjoy the play; appreciation without envy of the valour of others or a spirit of emulation’; ‘aptitude for command and moral ability to resume the cordial tone of comrade, as soon as the office of leader held during play has ceased’ (Programmes 1923, pp. 337–​338). Lombardo Radice, in short, placed his didactic prescriptions within the pedagogical horizon of the ‘conscious play’ already presented in Lezioni di didattica, although now, the playful activity’s regulating function was also better specified in terms of the role that the teacher had to assume in didactic scenes of a physical nature: ‘It is prescribed as an absolute duty that teachers attend the pupils’ play, as elder brothers, as impartial judges of disputes, and also as playmates. However, they should never remove their distance: cordiality should not descend to the point of unlawful confidence. The teacher’s participation in the pupils’ play might be not continuous, nor daily, and serve as an “essay” of the well-​conducted play and as an affirmation of the teacher’s youth and serenity. The child is in fact like the soldier who takes pleasure in seeing his superior perform the exercise that he too must repeat. The participation of the superior in the play, as long as it is measured and correct, lends dignity to the recreation and prevents the mad agitation of the children, who, in the inevitable competitions of the various exercises and plays, often end up getting excited and losing all control of themselves’ (ibid., p. 337). On the one hand, the teacher was invited to discreetly and occasionally intervene in the playful activity to allow its formative potential to independently unfold. On the other, the teacher was called upon to participate in the children’s play. The first reason for the teacher’s intervention seemed to clash with the formative horizon of self-​discipline that, as mentioned, was fostered by games and was in line with Lombardo Radice’s more general pedagogical perspective: the idea that the teacher’s bodily movements should be imitated by the schoolchildren contradicted the valuing of the active role of the pupil and the rejection of the standardisation of teaching practices. In this regard, it is sufficient to recall a passage from Lezioni di didattica in which teachers were warned against

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considering the child an ‘imitator, almost a repeater of others’ (Lombardo Radice 1917, p. 18), or another from L’ideale educativo e la scuola nazionale in which Lombardo Radice had written: ‘Any modifying action of others, which is determined by the passivity with respect to himself of the one who exercises it, and determines a passive adaptation of the one on whom it is exercised, is diseducative’ (1961, p. 67). If, however, one pays attention to the other reasons why the teacher’s intervention was necessary, this inconsistency can be reduced. In addition to the realism that ran through the 1923 programmes and Lombardo Radice’s own pedago-​ gical reflections –​whereby it was said that the teacher’s presence would prevent children from getting carried away in the heat of play –​it can be noted that the ministerial document presented a teacher who was aware of his own dignity and, at the same time, cordial, jovial and serene, that is, capable of expressing both the normative and recreational spirit of playful activity. It is no coincidence that, in the preface to the considerations on play, he pointed out to teachers ‘an admirable model to imitate: Father Giovanni Bosco’ (Programmi 1923, p. 337). Lombardo Radice saw in the educational work of this Piedmontese priest and his followers a solution to the issue of the value-​neutrality of public education, which, although secular, needed ‘a soul’ (1920, p. 63). The reference to Don Bosco should, therefore, be traced back to the centrality that his educational system accorded to recreation, as a context in which the growth of the younger generations could be directed, including on a moral level: just as the Piedmontese priest was defined in the Salesians’ writings as the ‘soul of recreation’ (Lanfranchi 2003, p. 98), so too were teachers invited by Lombardo Radice to pose as educators who could give space to their pupils’ spontaneity and, at the same time, guide their consciences, starting from their role as animators of play. Therefore, even when they urged pupils to emulate their teacher, the 1923 programmes were not referring to a mechanical-​procedural approach to imitation ‒ as was required in methodical gymnastic exercises ‒ but to that of which Lombardo Radice had spoken in his Lezioni di didattica, that is to the ‘inner conforming of the pupil to the law that he feels is alive and active in the teacher, or rather: the formation of a law of life that is generated in the conscience of the teacher and the pupil, in the act of communion that is education’ (1917, p. 15). By participating in playful activity, the teacher put the pupils in a position to rediscover in their souls both the sense of rules and the expressive vivacity that is proper to play. The ludic orientation of physical education proposed by the 1923 programmes was also, in the final analysis, linked to the pivot around which the whole of Lombardy-​Radice’s school pedagogy revolved: ‘the method is the teacher’ (ibid., p. 18).

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Concluding remarks To confirm this thesis, it is worth mentioning an article that Lombardo Radice himself wrote in October 1924 in L’educazione nazionale, the famous journal he founded in 1919. Commenting on the didactic norms for physical activity in elementary schools issued the previous year, he stated: ‘When in Italy it will be understood that “physical” education is the true “spiritual” masterpiece of the teacher, we will truly have the Italian school’ (Lombardo Radice 1924, p. 53). This wish was, however, formulated when Lombardo Radice had left his role at the Ministry (Cives 2014, pp. 211–​213; Chiosso 2019, pp. 150–​153) and his elementary school reform project was about to be contaminated by Fascism’s school policy; only to be overtaken later by the increase on the fascistisation of the Italian education system (Charnitzky 2001, pp. 193–​493), a process in which the formative focus on the body, increasingly charged with ideological meanings, would also assume a strategic role in the formation of the fascist ‘new man’ (Ponzio 2015; Alfieri 2021). On the threshold of this turning point, the significance of Lombardo Radice’s contribution on physical education gained even more importance. His ability to present a theoretical alternative to positivism to assert the education of the body and his original reinterpretation of the ludic orientation were in tune with an edu-​ cational proposal that had a clear democratic intonation, which, in post-​World War II Italy, would represent a precious reserve of pedagogical ideas, didactic indications and ethical-​political values for a rethinking of the elementary school curriculum including in the area of teaching physical activities.

Printed sources Baumann, E. (1907):  La ginnastica italiana. Manuale per uso degli insegnanti elementari e di ginnastica, delle scuole normali maschili e femminili e dei corsi complementari. Vol. I. Roma. De Dominicis, S. (1922): Linee di pedagogia elementare. Vol. I. Milano-​Roma-​ Napoli (Original edition: 1897). Gentile, G. (1920): La riforma dell’educazione. Discorsi ai maestri di Trieste. Bari. Lombardo Radice, G. (1917): Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magi-​ strale. Milano-​Palermo-​Napoli-​Genova-​Bologna (Original edition: 1913). Lombardo Radice, G. (1920):  Clericali e massoni di fronte al problema della scuola. Roma. Lombardo Radice, G. (1924): L’illustrazione dei nuovi programmi. L’educazione igienica. In: L’Educazione Nazionale 6(2), pp. 32–​55.

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Lombardo Radice, G. (1961): L’ideale educativo e la scuola nazionale. Lezioni di pedagogia generale fondata sul concetto di autoeducazione. Firenze (Original edition: 1916). Programmi di studio e prescrizioni didattiche per le scuole elementari (1923). In Catarsi, E. (1990): Storia dei programmi della scuola elementare italiana (1860–​1985), pp. 313–​343. Firenze.

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Mazzetti, R. (1958):  Giuseppe Lombardo Radice tra l’idealismo pedagogico e Maria Montessori. Bologna. Morandi, M. (2015): Corpo e carattere. L’educazione fisica’ scolastica dall’Unità al secondo dopoguerra. In Ferrari, M./​Morandi, M. (eds.): I programmi scolastici di ‘educazione fisica’ in Italia. Una lettura storico-​pedagogica. Milano, pp.  20–​40. Ponzio, A. (2009): La palestra del Littorio. L’Accademia della Farnesina: un esperimento di pedagogia totalitaria nell’Italia fascista. Milano. Ponzio, A. (2015): Shaping the new man. Youth training regimes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Madison. Stewart-​Steinberg, S.  (2011):  L’effetto Pinocchio. Italia 1861–​1922. La costruzione di una complessa modernità. Roma (Original edition: The Pinocchio Effect. On Making Italians, 1860–​1922. Chicago, 2007)

Andrea Dessardo

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice anti-​Montessorian Abstract

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice has gone down in history, at least in popular opinion, as the main detractor of Maria Montessori (Kramer 1976) according to the criticism expressed in 1926 on the occasion of the publication of the third edition (Leenders 1996) of the Metodo della pedagogia scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini [The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education in the Children’s Houses], an edition that had been considerably revised in comparison to the two previous editions (Montessori 2000). In 1926, however –​it should be remembered –​Lombardo Radice was not only no longer in the service of the Direttore generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare, but he was also openly critical of the Fascist government (Meda 2021), unequivocally distancing himself from its policies and its conception of school education. As we will attempt to show in these pages and as already been intuited by De Giorgi (2013, p. 54), it is probable that the Catanian professor’s distance from Montessori’s educational model was based not only on different conceptions of pedagogy, but was also, if not mainly, on political and ideological grounds. Keywords: Maria Montessori, Leopoldo and Alice Franchetti, fascism, neoidealism, method

The comments from 1921 For a long time, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice had preferred not to publicly express an opinion about Maria Montessori, so much so that she and her Metodo della pedagogia scientifica were ignored in the journals he edited until as late as 1926, that is a good twenty years after her work came to prominence and her fame had already spread widely, especially abroad. It is perhaps no coincidence, therefore, that his first commentary on Maria Montessori was in a foreign, albeit Italian-​speaking journal, L’Adula from Tessin (Bonalumi 1970; Crespi 2004), edited by the ‘fervent Montessori disciple Teresa Bontempi’ (Lombardo Radice 1925c, p. 508), in July 1921. And he did so, as he himself confessed, in the wake of the ‘reproach’ made to him by his namesake Sheila Radice (1920) in the volume The New Children. Talks with Dr. Maria Montessori, which drew together various articles that had appeared in the autumn of 1919 in the Times Educational Supplement, having been urged to do so by

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a ‘doctor friend, a good amateur in pedagogy, enthusiastic about the method’ (Lombardo Radice 1925c). Lombardo Radice revealed in that article that he had developed a profound and long-​standing knowledge of the Metodo della pedagogia scientifica since its publication in 1909, to the extent of having devoted two months of lessons to it at the normal school in Catania, where he was teaching at the time, and had even become an active promoter of it: ‘In 1910 I had a kindergarten founded by the Unione Femminile Catanese [Catanian Women’s Union], to which I was and still am a consultant, which was informed by the Montessori spirit and used Montessori material; then, when I was asked by the Associazione per il Mezzogiorno d’Italia [Association for Southern Italy] about the most suitable organisation for the kindergartens that it was setting up in Calabria [...] I gave my opinion, without hesitation, in favour of the Montessori method as a criterion for the orientation and training of the teachers’ (ibid., p. 510). Despite some reservations, which he attributed above all to the ‘special pre-​ paration in her youthful studies and [to] her philosophical uncertainty’ (ibid., p. 517), Lombardo Radice, in that same article in L’Adula, which he later also reproduced in Accanto ai maestri, reserved more than favourable comments for Montessori, whom he defined, in essence, as an unconscious neo-​idealist. On the contrary, he was pleased to defend her from the criticism expressed in Luigi Credaro’s Rivista pedagogica [Pedagogical Periodical] (D’Arcangeli 2000) by the ‘Herbartian, empiricist, scientistic or practical ranks of Della Valle, Franzoni, Armani, Zanzi’ (Lombardo Radice 1925c, pp. 511–​512; cf. Della Valle 1911; Zanzi 1918; Trabal-​ zini 2019), that is from his contemporary antagonists in the academy; such criticisms, he argued, were not really supported, as they claimed, by scientific or philosophical motives, but on the contrary revealed their suspicion of what for Lombardo Radice was her greatest and most fundamental intuition, namely the principle of self-​education: ‘An enthusiast of children, Montessori has realised in the children’s “homes” the greatest serenity of childish work, helping childhood to self-​appraisal and the joyful choice of manual work to the extent that the soul awakens’ (Lombardo Radice 1925c, p. 513). Paola Trabalzini sums up Della Valle’s criticism with ‘a lack of philosophical-​pedagogical training, from which follows a theoretical fragility; an absence of didactic originality; artificiality of the materials for the education of the senses; the appeal to a naturalistically understood freedom’ (Trabalzini 2019, p. 45). The same arguments will be repeated at length by Montessori’s detractors. Andrea Lupi (2021) correctly observes that, on the whole, more criticism came to Montessori from Catholics and neo-​Kantians than from neo-​idealists, adding that ‘while the other idealists have just appreciated the spirit, the freedom, and

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the spontaneous nature of her experiment, also outlining the fetishism of the method but avoiding any specific analysis, Lombardo Radice shows a sincere desire to explain Montessori’s educational message more extensively to enrich the school environment, devoid of any personalism’ (ibid., p. 49). Lombardo Radice, in fact, saw many traits in common between his own phi-​ losophical conception and Montessori’s proposal. They shared, in particular, the principle of self-​education, which, as we know, he himself had set as the foundation of his pedagogy when, in 1916, he had published L’ideale educativo e la scuola nazionale. Lezioni di pedagogia generale fondata sul concetto di autoeducazione, a text that –​despite the tepid response of his critics (Codignola 1954) –​Lombardo Radice considered the summa of his pedagogical thought; Montessori, who in turn had published L’autoeducazione nelle scuole elementari [The Advanced Montessori Method] in 1916, could therefore be defined by him as ‘ours’, ‘Italian’, insofar as she had breathed in, even if she was not fully aware of it, that idealistic pedagogy that ‘was always antipedagogical, that is, the enemy of formulism, of predetermined plans, of rules of the art of teaching, of programmes’ (Lombardo Radice 1925b, p. 514). And again: ‘It is Italian thought that has shaken off the coarse empiricism of the practical and utilitarian age, culminating in the work of Giovanni Gentile ruthlessly destroying the old pedagogy’ (ibid., p. 515). Gentile himself, called upon in 1922 to express an opinion on the granting of a subsidy by the Municipality of Roma to maintain the Montessori method in two schools in the Italian capital, gave a substantially positive judgement (Gentile 1922 then in Valitutti 1968), which Cives (1998, p. 354) defines as ‘tormented and dialectic, tense between possibility and what ought to be, subjective freedom and social necessity, generalisation and model school, expansion and utopian perspective’. For Lombardo Radice, the positivist approach in Montessori was nothing more than a legacy of the medical studies of her youth, from which she would hopefully soon be freed, and not a conscious epistemological choice; on the contrary, Maria Montessori, according to him, had shown herself to be rebelling against the scientistic pretension to regulate education within rigid and consolidated didactic protocols, revolutionising the way of conducting the classroom. This rejection, for example, of the fixed desk and the curriculum, converged de facto with the neo-​idealist school reform project, at that chronological moment entrusted to the leadership of Benedetto Croce, Minister of Public Edu-​ cation (Tognon 1990). In short, Lombardo Radice’s judgement, as expressed in 1921, was exactly the opposite of what one might at first believe, especially if compared with that, declared in the same year (and in the same month, in July), by another neo-​idealist, Ugo Spirito (Cavallera 2000), who dismissed the Metodo della pedagogia scientifica in the Rivista pedagogica (Spirito 1921). Thus,

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for Cives: ‘Starting, however, from a cautious distinction and gradually slipping into an unfortunate polemic, and not only with the Montessorians but also with Montessori herself, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice does not seem, nevertheless, to have remained extraneous and deaf, as an expert and passionate scholar of the school, to the innovative contributions of the “Montessori method”, which he sees as a constructive component, especially if implemented without rigidities, of the concrete Italian way of the scuola serena, a component of the broader way of activism’ (Cives 1998, p. 349). In that 1921 article Lombardo Radice connected Montessori’s work to that of Leopoldo and Alice Franchetti in the Montesca school, which he visited in 1915, and which was the primary source of inspiration for Athena fanciulla. Scienza e poesia della scuola serena (Lombardo Radice 1925a) and for him the most authentic model of the school as it should be: Baron and Baroness Franchetti had in fact promoted and financed the publication of the Metodo della pedagogia scientifica in 1909. The reproposal of the article published in L’Adula in Accanto ai maestri is very significant. Nuovi saggi di propaganda pedagogica was given to the press in 1922 and again, in an edition enriched by the experiences gained in a year and a half ’s service to the Ministry, in 1925: the article La Montessori e l’idealismo pedagogico [Montessori and Pedagogical Idealism] was reproposed a few pages before the text of the speech he gave at Montesca in July 1920 in moving memory of the already deceased Franchetti. In that volume of almost six hundred pages, passio-​ nately dedicated to the pedagogical debate before and after the war, to his direct involvement in the conflict (cf. Gatti 2000) and obviously to the school reform carried out with his friend Gentile, those were the only two texts that dealt with concrete pedagogical experiences in the school context; a sign, in our opinion, of the consideration that Lombardo Radice had at that time for the work of Maria Montessori, who in fact had been included among the possible ‘pedagogical differentiations’ admitted by the Gentile reform in nursery schools. Imagining, in his speech to the elementary school teachers at the Montesca school, the conversations between Alice and Leopoldo Franchetti when they had conceived the opening of the institute, Lombardo Radice expressed thoughts that would be very similar to those found in The absorbent mind of 1949: ‘The earth redeems itself for man and in man; but man redeems himself in the child. We will not change anything until we change the child’ (Lombardo Radice 1925a, pp. 569–​570). And he continued, illustrating the main merits of that school: ‘This education, which is both scientific and artistic, is completed by a scrupulous attention to the useful, that is to say, to work, which most interests the peasant boys and girls and soon enables them to participate as collaborators

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in the small business of the farm, because it is not abstract exercises in conventional accounting or housekeeping that the teachers aim at, but the pupil’s real and continuous vision of the domestic world’. (ibid., p. 572) Shortly afterwards Lombardo Radice also wished to emphasise the scouting role of Alice Franchetti, the discoverer of Maria Marchetti, her ‘spiritual daughter’, but also, indeed, of Montessori: ‘She was the first to appreciate the valiant educator and pedagogist Maria Montessori. From Alice Franchetti she had encouragement and help. Here [...] the first Montessori course for nursery teachers was held in 1909. And in Città di Castello the first volume of Montessori was printed by Lapi, and published by the Franchettis’ (ibid., pp. 572–​573). Leopoldo Franchetti’s relations with Lombardo Radice were close and cordial, both being involved –​the baron as president –​in the ANIMI [National Association for the Interests of the Italian Mezzogiorno]. The opening in 1909 of the third Casa dei Bambini in Roma, the one at the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary, in Giusti street, which was destined to take in the orphans of the Messina and Reggio Calabria earthquake, also dates to this context. Then in 1911 and again in 1914, the Montessori method was also promoted, through the organisation of two courses, by the Società Umanitaria in Milan, a social-​reformist-​ oriented association close to Lombardo Radice’s political sensibility (Dessardo 2021). In 1926, in an article to which we will return, Lombardo Radice reiterated the influence that Alice Hallgarten Franchetti must have had on Montessori: ‘There is in her books –​especially in the first –​a deeper sense of humanity, which recalls the influence of Alice Franchetti, her first patron and authoritative initiator of her discovery outside of Italy’ (Lombardo Radice 1926a, p. 21). Fulvio De Giorgi has observed how the dedication of the Metodo della pedagogia scientifica to the Franchetti family, who were known to have been close to Catholic modernist circles, publicly marked what he effectively calls the ‘reversal of alliances’ (De Giorgi 2013, p. 28), with which Montessori emancipated herself from the initial radical-​Masonic collocation, marked by the figures of Edoardo Talamo, Luigi Credaro and Ernesto Nathan, who had been her first supporters and thanks to whom the first Casa dei Bambini had been opened; an initial collocation that, together with her later visits to India, would feed the ‘black legend’ of ‘a secularist, naturalist, anti-​Christian, theosophist Montessori’ (ibid., pp. 5–​6). De Giorgi’s commentary on Montessori’s pedagogy, in our opinion, is very close to that of Lombardo Radice: ‘She valued positivist anthropological researches, but condemned certain excessively schematic and scholastic expressions of them that confused the experimental study of the child with his/​her education and pedagogical anthropology with scientific pedagogy. [...] Distinguishing between the spirit of the scientist and the mechanism of the scientist, Maria

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Montessori affirmed that it was necessary to prepare and train in teachers more the spirit than the mechanism’ (ibid., pp. 25–​26).

‘Montessori yes, but without Montessorism’ After the re-​issue of Accanto ai maestri, Lombardo Radice returned to speak –​as anticipated –​from the columns of L’educazione nazionale with two separate articles both appearing in the July 1926 issue: A proposito del metodo Montessori [About the Montessori Method] (pp. 21–​25) and La nuova edizione del ‘Metodo della pedagogia scientifica’ di Maria Montessori [The New Edition of The Montessori Method] (1926b, pp. 33–​50). In these he swiftly moved from statements of appreciation and support, albeit with some reservations, to the harshest criticism, directed, however, more at Montessori’s person than at her teaching method. The first of the two articles was prompted by the start of the Montessori method course in Milan, ‘a prelude to the establishment of the desired Scuola di Metodo per l’educazione materna [Method School for Nursery Education], which will be set up in Roma’: ‘Our position is well known: full acceptance of the general pedagogical basis of the Casa dei Bambini, insofar as it is a home, not a school (their home, in which they move freely and experiment with their own strengths); complete distrust of the tendency towards standard education and the scientistic claim to establish, once and for all and for everyone, what the exercise tool is; even deeper distrust of that “intolerant Montessorism” that wants very faithful executor teachers, and is ready to excommunicate any “deviation”, that is, any personal initiative to modify the method’. Thus, as ‘Montessorism’ was becoming institutionalised, Lombardo Radice distanced himself from it, in line with his opposition to codified didactics. He added, however, to this criticism that he considered already ‘known’, an important consideration: ‘Montessori women [...] are a kind of order with its own intangible ritual’. Evidently, he used that expression in a hyperbolic sense, but without knowing it he had identified the truth: De Giorgi (2013) discovered how a project of a sort of lay congregation had actually been set up by Montessori to bring together her disciples (‘faithful priestesses of the method’, Lombardo Radice ironised). ‘But certainly’, the editor of L’educazione nazionale continued, ‘their teacher is the least Montessorian of all’ (p. 21). If the method achieved more success abroad than at home, it was simply because ‘the Italian spirit’, thanks to Gentile’s renewed pedagogy, had made it its own, had incorporated it into every didactic expression of its school, without fossilising it in a specific form, as was so typical of Anglo-​Saxon culture. Gentile’s reform, by contrast, had opened all schools –​Lombardo Radice was keen

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to emphasise the democratic inspiration of his action –​to pedagogical experimentation, which was left to the full freedom of the teachers: ‘The novelty lies in the soul of the teacher, who knows how to break with the didactic tradition of the ‘repertory school’, and to establish the tradition of the research school, of the explorer school’ (p. 22), so that ‘the best Montessorians are those who freely depart from the letter of Montessori, continuing her spirit. Even if they sometimes seem... anti-​Montessori’ (p. 24). In this last reference he was evidently also referring to himself. These moderate objections to the dissemination of the Montessori method were followed a few pages later, in the same July 1926 issue of L’educazione nazionale, by some much harsher remarks that Giuseppe Lombardo Radice reserved for the new edition of Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica, which he reviewed with meticulous critical references. In light of what has already been said, this was not a criticism of the method itself, but of its institutionalisation, of what that new edition could become: a sort of ready-​made manual, republished for the benefit of the Scuola di Metodo [Montessori Method School] to be established in Roma and the Opera Nazionale Montessori [Montessori National Opera] founded in 1924 with the full patronage of the Fascist government. This was an institution that, in 1926, could well be compared to other similar institutions, the ONMI [Opera Nazionale Maternità Infanzia, for the protection of motherhood and infancy] (Minesso 2007) of 1925 and the ONB [Opera Nazionale Balilla, for the fascist education of young generations] (Betti 1984), established a few weeks before Lombardo Radice wrote his article; Montessori, with the heavy revisions to the text of the Metodo della pedagogia scientifica, ‘sends a clear signal, she prefers to remove a reference that could put her in a bad light with the fascist government’ (Lupi 2013, p. 54). It is interesting to read these public judgements in the light of those that Lombardo Radice made in those same months privately, in a personal letter, to Maria Boschetti-​Alberti, his favourite disciple (she addressed him as ‘master’ and he used to reply with ‘daughter’): ‘There is one more nugget of true genius in her [Montessori] amidst much worthless material. That nugget is true genius; the rest is common femininity! She needs absolute and unconditional praise, she does not tolerate personalities near her, she wants those who are faithful. Montessorism is a kind of church or rather a sect. [...] One must love and pity Montessori, and go one’s own way’1.

1 Letter from Giuseppe Lombardo Radice to Maria Boschetti Alberti dated 18 April 1926, conserved in Archival Collection ‘Maria Boschetti-​Alberti’, Lugano Cantonal Library. A copy is kept in the Giuseppe Lombardo Radice Archive at the ‘Mauro Laeng’ School

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He went on to give a fuller explanation of his opinion of Montessori’s success abroad in relation to the scarce attention she received at home, reiterating how, in his opinion, Montessorism could only be of value if its founder agreed to place it within neo-​idealist pedagogy, within a broader and less dogmatic philosophical horizon: ‘M[ontessori] had great fortune abroad (and was helped in this by that saintly soul who was Alice Franchetti, who subsidised M[ontessori] in the beginning and made her very well known to her many American and German friends) and her fortune was a magnificent Italian achievement. But M[ontessori] did not work in her own country as she should have done, and she has just now resolved to do something, with these courses, after so many years. In Italy she has had less luck, because she did not want to have it, after all, disdaining all contact with those who, although rejecting her, wanted to look deeper. In Italy there is in Montessori what could be called a general spirit, which belongs to idealism, from the Risorgimento to us; Montessorism will lose its character of specialism and methodism in Italy. She feels this, and regrets it. But we will assert that much genius that is in Montessori, against Montessorism itself ’. It is worth emphasising once again the reference to Alice Hallgarten Franchetti’s memory. The very harsh review of the third edition of the Metodo della pedagogia scientifica, published, as already mentioned, in the same issue of L’educazione nazionale of July 1926, in fact laid great stress on the omission of the dedication to the barons Franchetti that had been present in the first two editions (pp. 34–​37) and the disappointment was such, it seems to us, that it seriously disturbed the serenity of Lombardo Radice’s judgement. His disappointment in this regard, indeed his indignation, was very strong, as he had also written privately to Boschetti Alberti in a subsequent letter of 2 October 1926: ‘To have torn up the dedication to a dead person who was never so dutiful is something that has revolted me!’2.

and Didactics Museum of the University of Roma 3, in the Collection ‘Correspondence –​Maria Boschetti Alberti’. 2 Letter from Giuseppe Lombardo Radice to Maria Boschetti Alberti dated 2 October 1926, conserved in Archival Collection ‘Maria Boschetti Alberti’, Lugano Cantonal Library. A copy is kept in the Giuseppe Lombardo Radice Archive at the ‘Mauro Laeng’ School and Didactics Museum of the University of Roma 3, in the Collection ‘Correspondence –​Maria Boschetti Alberti’. Perhaps this excerpt, from a letter from Rosa Agazzi to Giuseppe Lombardo Radice dated Bolzano, 13 July 1926, may also be helpful: ‘I read the pamphlet and, although serious, I was not astounded by its contents. I have not been astounded by Montessori’s

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‘Unfortunately, the Montessori of today, much more than that of yesterday’, wrote Lombardo Radice again in the review (p. 33), taking up concepts already expressed in private to Boschetti-​Alberti, ‘is inclined to consider her work as an intangible word of faith:  unfortunately Montessori loses contact with modern pedagogy and is in a state of mind [...] that makes her wish even to forget what in the first edition came to her from the suggestion and direct and indirect inspiration of other educators’. In fact, in addition to reproaching the omission of the dedication to the Franchettis, Lombardo Radice pointed out the absence of the references, present in the previous editions, to the names of Lucy Latter, Credaro, Lombroso and others, including Olga Lodi, Candida Nuccitelli and Francesco Randone (the latter being notoriously close to Freemasonry [De Feo 2011]), all debts of gratitude which Montessori seemed to forget or even disown; indeed Lombardo Radice did not even fail to emphasise the absence (which in fact, in the context, appears clamorous even to us) of the slightest reference to the school reform of 1923 (Charnitzky 1996), which had also recognised the importance of the Metodo della pedagogia scientifica and had tried to enhance it. Obviously, there was also a shadow of personal offence in the Catanese pedagogist’s words: ‘Some of that address wanted to point out to the teachers some hints of the Montessori method in the “programmes” of 1923; and some of those poor “philosophers” were once asked to illustrate the Montessori method in front of an august person; and in the Roman pro-​Montessori committee the pedagogy was and is represented by idealist philosophers; and it was Giovanni Gentile himself who promoted by decree the foundation of method schools; and it is Gentile himself who today presides over the Opera Nazionale Montessori -​Ente Morale Montessori [Montessori Moral Institution], to whose establishment the Gentile administration was clearly in favour (despite all the philosophical reservations of the Minister and his collaborators)’ (p. 44). He recoiled sharply: ‘All that is asked for is a little respect for the history or at least the chronicle of Montessori’s fortune in Italy. But evidently the egregious woman has no taste for these poor things and one must accept her as she is, for the good she has done, which is much’.



work for a long time. In my tired soul I hold the conviction that there has been much exaggeration about it: I dare no longer hope that the truth will come out. I shall at least be so grateful to you if, on re-​examining the problem, you will be pleased to affirm that our work (skilfully exploited in the practical part by Doctor Montessori) has been constructive, patient, maternal, and above all honest’.

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Lombardo Radice returned to speak of Montessori, again in the columns of L’educazione nazionale, in more relaxed tones a few months later, in September 1926, in the article La riforma didattica. Fröbel e Montessori nella più recente critica del montessorismo [Didactic Reform. Fröbel and Montessori in the Most Recent Criticism of Montessorism] (Lombardo Radice 1926c), where, citing above all the opinions of Sergej Hessen, the innovative scope of Montessori’s method was belittled, reducing it to a variant of Froebelism:  a position that was flatly denied by Montessori’s supporters, who conceived of themselves as alternatives and antagonists to the Kindergarten system. This opposition, harsher abroad, was diluted in Italy by the work of the Agazzi sisters, who were considered a sort of link between the two methods, ‘so wrongly neglected by foreign pedagogy’ (p. 1). The Catanian professor reflected: ‘In Italy, Montessori orthodoxy having been lacking, with a few exceptions, there was almost no opposition between Montessori and Fröbel, and there was an attempt in practice to utilise, harmoniously, the two motifs of education that they represent’. It was probably through comparing Froebelism and Montessorism, with the Agazzi synthesis of the two, that Lombardo Radice ended up definitively rejecting the Montessori method and instead became an active supporter of the Pasquali-​Agazzi method. A trace of this emerges in the previously mentioned letter to Maria Boschetti Alberti of 2 October 1926: ‘This summer I made another discovery: how much Montessori owes to the Agazzi method, born in 1898, illustrated by Pasquali in 1903 (mind the date) which she never mentions! I regret that I did not realise this sooner. But I want to make amends by studying well and expounding on the Agazzi method (by Rosa Agazzi, who spent a lifetime among the children of the people, without seeking... patents!)’. The method of the Agazzi sisters, known in the field and through the writings of Pietro Pasquali, who died in 1921, was later the subject of an extensive study in 1928 that Giuseppe Lombardo Radice published in Il problema dell’educazione infantile [The Problem of Child Education], indicating it as the most suitable approach.

Anti-​montessorism and politics It was mentioned, at the outset of this paper, that the fame Lombardo Radice earned as the ‘suppressor’ of the Montessori method in Italy probably has, so to speak, extra-​pedagogical foundations, that is, reasons other than strictly educational ones; although these were obviously not lacking, as has been shown. It is worth remembering that, in the years between his first comments on Maria Montessori’s work in 1921, repeated in 1922 and 1925, and his harshest

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criticism in 1926, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s main commitment was to the Direzione generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare and his participation in the 1923 reform, an adventure that ended with his resignation in June 1924, in the aftermath of Giacomo Matteotti’s kidnapping. Here it seems more important to focus specifically on his resignation, which he made for explicitly political reasons, which he explained in the presentation of Accanto ai maestri (dated November 1924), openly declaring himself to be anti-​fascist: ‘Rereading the pages I added to the first edition I feel my devotion to Gentile magnified. The dearer it is to me today to declare this, the less I share his faith in men who are exponents of the political-​moral situation in Italy after June 1924. May historical experience confuse and humiliate me. I will be happy if facts crush what would have been, therefore, my presumption! But as long as I see the gravity of errors that seem irremediable to me, I consider it my duty as a citizen ‒ painful but imperious ‒ not to keep my judgement to myself. The citizen is never a private individual’ (Lombardo Radice 1925a, p. XV). In fact, he had already declared his distance from Fascism, albeit in less assertive terms, on 21 November 1923, explaining –​in particular to Ernesto Codi-​ gnola  –​the opportunity for the Fascio di educazione nazionale, which he had founded, not to compromise itself through associations with Mussolini’s go-​ vernment, and to remain extraneous to political alignments: ‘neither fascist nor pro-​fascist, but Italian; not nationalist, but national’. The text of that letter, which remained unpublished at the time, was published among the Nuovi saggi di pro-​ paganda pedagogica (Lombardo Radice 1925b, pp. 447–​450) as a testimony and, it seems to us, as a future memory of his extraneousness to the nascent regime. In light of what has been said above, therefore, it is likely that there was a political evaluation in the harsh judgement given to the third edition of the Metodo della pedagogia scientifica and the substantial practical rejection of Montessori’s proposal, which she had also shown herself to recognise. In the last moves of Maria Montessori, Lombardo Radice probably also saw, not without reason, a repositioning, the disavowal of her convictions in the name of a quiet life, in order to gain the support of the regime. A position that, to an avowed anti-​ fascist who had renounced the benefits of collaboration with the government, must have seemed morally unacceptable. This most probably, rather than misunderstandings on the level of educational theory, lies at the heart of that bitterness against the pedagogist of the Casa dei Bambini, which Cives (1983, p. 153) described as ‘malignity’. Moreover, in an obviously very nuanced manner, this theme was also al-​ luded to in the review of the third edition of the Metodo della pedagogia scientifica:  ‘Other changes concern Montessori’s so-​called political orientation. The

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political rhetoric of the 1909 edition is almost always abandoned’ (p. 48), a refe-​ rence to the long Discorso inaugurale pronunziato in occasione dell’apertura di una ‘Casa dei Bambini’ [Inaugural speech delivered on the occasion of the opening of a ‘Casa dei Bambini’] that Maria Montessori had always published as an introduction to her Metodo della pedagogia scientifica until 1926, when it was expunged; a speech (Montessori 2000, pp. 136–​159) with a strong social element, in which the institution of the Case dei Bambini in the San Lorenzo district was closely linked –​in addition to the institution presided over by Edoardo Talamo, which was expressly quoted –​with the work of elevating the urban proletariat and freeing women from their family commitments:  ‘The new woman, like a butterfly that has emerged from the chrysalis, will have freed herself from all the attributes that once made her desirable to man, as a source of material well-​being of existence. She will be like man a free human individual, a social worker: and like man she will seek comfort and rest in the reformed and socialised home. For herself she will want to be loved and not as a means of well-​being and rest; and she will want love, free from all forms of servile labour’ (ibid., p. 158). In conclusion, it seems to us that Giuseppe Lombardo Radice viewed the way the Montessori experiment was implemented in the years in which Fascism became a regime, as a betrayal of Montessori’s original pedagogical intuitions, with it being reduced to an instrument at the service of power, while in Maria Montessori he now saw more of a smart businesswoman than a scrupulous educator. It remains unknown whether, having been forced to take the oath to Fa-​ scism in 1931, he was later able to revise these judgements when, as we know, Maria Montessori resigned the presidency of the Opera Nazionale Montessori in 1933 and the following year was even forced to leave Italy in order to maintain her independence of thought and control over the orthodoxy of her pedagogical method. The sudden death of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice in 1938, however, prevented any possible reconciliation at the return of democracy.

References Betti, C. (1984): L’Opera nazionale Balilla e l’educazione fascista. Firenze. Bonalumi, G. (1970): La giovane Adula, 1912–​1920. Saggio introduttivo e antologia dei testi più significativi. Chiasso. Cavallera, H.A. (2000): Ugo Spirito. La ricerca dell’incontrovertibile. Formello. Cives, G. (1983): Attivismo e antifascismo in Giuseppe Lombardo Radice: critica didattica o didattica critica?. Firenze.

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Cives, G. (1998): Il giudizio sulla Montessori negli anni Venti. Le ispezioni di Resta e Gentile. In: Guidolin, E./​Antinori, F. (eds.): Formazione permanente e trasformazioni sociali. Scritti in onore di Rosetta Finazzi Sartor. Padova, pp. 339–​360. Charnitzky, J. (1996): Fascismo e scuola. La politica scolastica del regime (1922–​ 1943). Firenze. Codignola, E. (1954):  Nota introduttiva. In:  Lombardo Radice, G.:  Didattica viva. Problemi ed esperienze. Firenze, pp. IX–​XVI. Crespi, F. (2004): Ticino irredento. La frontiera contesa: dalla battaglia culturale dell’‘Adula’ ai piani d’invasione. Milano. D’Arcangeli, M.A. (2000):  Luigi Credaro e la ‘Rivista pedagogica’ (1908–​1939).  Roma. De Feo, G.C. (2011): Maria Montessori, Francesco Randone e la Scuola d’arte educatrice. In: De Sanctis, L. (ed.): La cura dell’anima in Maria Montessori. L’educazione morale, spirituale e religiosa dell’infanzia. Roma, pp. 67–​77. De Giorgi, F. (2013): Rileggere Maria Montessori. Modernismo cattolico e rinnovamento educativo. In: Montessori, M.: Dio e il bambino e altri scritti inediti. Brescia, pp. 5–​104. Della Valle, G. (1911): Le «Case dei Bambini» e la «Pedagogia scientifica» di M. Montessori. In: Rivista Pedagogica, 4(1), p. 80. Dessardo, A. (2021): I legami con gli italiani della Venezia Giulia. In: Scaglia, E. (ed.): Una pedagogia dell’ascesa. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e il suo tempo. Roma, pp. 123–​145. Gatti, G.L. (2000): Dopo Caporetto. Gli ufficiali P nella Grande guerra: propaganda, assistenza, vigilanza. Gorizia. Gentile, G. (1922): Il metodo Montessori. In: L’educazione nazionale 4(7), p. 27. Kramer, R. (1976): Maria Montessori. A biography. Boston. Leenders, H. (1996): Con viva fede nel lavoro a venire. Intorno alla pubblicazione della terza edizione italiana del ‘Metodo della pedagogia scientifica’. 1926. In: I Problemi della pedagogia 42(4–​6), pp. 349–​356. Lombardo Radice, G. (1925a): Accanto ai maestri. Nuovi saggi di propaganda pedagogica. Torino. Lombardo Radice, G. (1925b):  Ricordando i Franchetti. In:  Id., Accanto ai maestri. Nuovi saggi di propaganda pedagogica. Torino, pp. 561–​576. Lombardo Radice, G. (1925c). La Montessori e l’idealismo pedagogico. In Id.: Accanto ai maestri. Nuovi saggi di propaganda pedagogica. Torino, pp. 508–​517.

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Lombardo Radice, G. (1926a): A proposito del metodo Montessori. In: L’Educazione nazionale 9(7), pp. 21–​25. Lombardo Radice, G. (1926b): La nuova edizione del ‘Metodo della pedagogia scientifica’ di Maria Montessori. In: L’Educazione nazionale 9(7), pp. 33–​50. Lombardo Radice, G. (1926c): La riforma didattica. Fröbel e Montessori nella più recente critica del montessorismo. In: L’Educazione nazionale 9(9), pp. 1–​10. Lombardo Radice, G. (1928): Il problema dell’educazione infantile. Firenze. Lupi, A. (2021): The perspective of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and of the idealist intellectuals on Maria Montessori. In: Ricerche di pedagogia e didattica. Journal of Theories and Research in Education 16(2), pp. 41–​57. Meda, J. (2021): ‘Saldamente padrone della mia dignità e libertà’. La difficile convivenza con il regime fascista (1925–​1931). In: Scaglia, E. (ed.): Una pedagogia dell’ascesa. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e il suo tempo. Roma, pp. 61–​85. Minesso, M. (2007): Stato e infanzia nell’Italia contemporanea. Origini, sviluppo e fine dell’ONMI, 1925–​1975. Bologna. Montessori, M. (2000): Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini. Edizione critica a cura di P. Trabalzini. Roma. Radice, S. (1920): The new children. Talks with dr. Maria Montessori. London. Spirito, U. (1921):  L’errore fondamentale del metodo Montessori. In:  Rivista pedagogica 14(1–​2), pp. 684–​692. Trabalzini, P. (2019): L’opposizione della pedagogia accademica del primo Novecento. In: Foschi, R./​Moretti, E./​Trabalzini, P. (eds.): Il destino di Maria Montessori. Promozioni, rielaborazioni, censure, opposizioni al Metodo. Roma, pp.  41–​61. Valitutti, S. (1968): Giovanni Gentile e il metodo Montessori. In: Vita dell’infanzia 17(6–​7), pp. 10–​16. Zanzi, C. (1918): Le Case dei Bambini della Montessori. In: Rivista Pedagogica 11(1–​2), (3–​4), pp. 1–​27, 157–​182.

Giuseppe Zago

The figure of the elementary teacher and headmaster in the thought of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice Abstract

This contribution reconstructs the figures of the elementary school teacher and the elementary school headmaster that emerge from an analysis of the main works of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. These two models greatly influenced the professional culture of Italian teachers and school principals until almost the end of the 1960s. The teacher is portrayed as a ‘missionary’ who dedicates his life to the cultural and moral elevation of his pupils, while the headmaster appears as a ‘father’ or rather a ‘master’ of the teachers working in the school institution he directs. Lombardo Radice saw ‘collaboration’ as a way of animating relations between the various participants in school life: headmaster, teachers, pupils, and families. Keywords: Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, representations of the teacher, representations of the headmaster, Italian elementary school, history of the Italian school

The representation of the elementary teacher between ‘mission’ and ‘collaboration’ Giuseppe Lombardo Radice made several references to the similarity of fun-​ ctions between teacher and headmaster. In certain passages dedicated to the ‘friendship of teachers’, he emphasised that both figures are called upon to perform an essential task in elementary schools. Teachers and headmasters must be ‘instigators and moderators’: the former of the collaboration with pupils and the latter of the collaboration with teachers. ‘Collaboration’ indeed respects and enriches the various parties involved, stimulates the conscious organisation of teaching and forms the ‘discipline of the spirit’. According to Cives (1970, pp. 87–​88), ‘in the pedagogy of collaboration proposed by Lombardo Radice can be grasped its distinctive problem: that of an open education, respectful of the many and requiring the contribution of everyone and in this anticipating what would later be called ‘community’ education against all reductive simplifications, and in fact denying the dialogue, the meeting, and an authentic and humanising socialisation’.

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Lombardo Radice constantly insisted on the importance of fostering fruitful collaborative relationships not only between the internal elements of the school community (teachers, pupils, families, headmaster, etc.), but also between the school community and its external environment. This is an open and modern vision, interpreted, however, according to the neo-​idealist canon, as a need for ‘discipline of the spirit and of the school’. Although his substantial loyalty to Gentile’s thought does not appear in doubt, there is no lack of differentiation and personal development of Lombardo Radice’s position, especially in his mature works. In particular, the Catanian scholar warned of the risks of Gentile’s identification of teacher and pupil: if their relationship is resolved completely in dialectical terms, both become abstract moments of a synthesis and the educational act becomes ineffable, devoid of any concreteness. His long experience in the school world and his marked sensitivity to didactic issues led him instead to interpret that relationship in concrete terms, as a process of collaboration between specific protagonists, and to propose the most effective practical solutions. His prevailing interest in didactic-​operational aspects retains its foundation in neo-​idealistic pedagogy, but the ideas taken from Gentile are constantly combined with original insights from his own reflection on the daily work of teachers. In real life there is ‘a world of souls, and every spiritual act is an interconnection of spiritual acts, a referencing and revealing of our life in other lives’ (Lombardo Radice 1913–​193616, p. 37), he emphasised. Man’s isolation is an abstraction: there is no consciousness that lives alone, that ignores the necessity and potential of dialogue with others. Unlike Gentile, Lombardo Radice felt the urgent need to overcome the immanentist solipsism of the absolute ‘I/​Ego’ and to value, in singular originality and creativity, the plurality of human subjects and relations1. Over the years, he increasingly emphasised the need to assert ‘otherness’ on a practical-​educational level, replacing the Gentile expression ‘fusion of souls’ with the truer and more meaningful ones of ‘interpenetration’ and ‘collaboration’2. In particular, recourse to the latter term seems aimed at somehow 1 Sergej Hessen (transl. 1960) had already observed that Lombardo Radice privileged the consideration of the empirical ‘I/​Ego’, ‘even though the empirical ‘I/​Ego’ must then resolve itself into the unity of the transcendental ‘I/​Ego’. While considering this a limitation, Hessen acknowledged that Lombardo Radice had emphasised, more forcefully than Gentile, ‘the moment of reality that stands dialectically before the subject’ (pp. 51–​52). 2 In a 1910 work of strict Gentile observance, Lombardo Radice (1923a) defined life as a ‘continuous transfusion of souls and interpenetration of consciences, among men living together, near and far’ and identified collaboration as ‘the secret of the school’

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releasing the individual conscience from the absoluteness of the spirit and translating, into practical terms, the ‘interpenetration of souls’, that is, the direct and personal contact between teacher and pupil. The theme of collaboration thus comes to assume centrality in his pedagogical reflection. Through careful empirical consideration, he firstly recovers and then re-​ evaluates the concrete exchanges that take place between teachers and pupils and emphasises the meaning and forms of ‘collaboration’ and ‘fellowship’ in school classes. His interpretation of the teacher-​pupil relationship and the principle of collaboration remain in Gentile’s mould, but there is no lack of new instances of observing the real activity of the teacher and rethinking his professional and moral image. Picking up on Gentile’s thought, Lombardo Radice (1913–​1936)16 interprets education as the ‘interpenetration of souls’, i.e. as ‘a state of consciousness in which the teacher’s distinct individuality from his pupils disappears and adapts to their spiritual moment, living it as his own and developing it, in order to push it to higher positions’. In the act of education, teacher and pupil form a single soul, a unified spiritual process: the true master is not something foreign to the pupil, and the true pupil ‘feels in the master himself ’, what he wants to become, and looks to the master ‘as his better self ’ (p. 11). In this union of souls, the young person seeks a rule to make his own and finds it in the master: in this spiri-​ tual communion, which is education, discipline is formed as the ‘law of life’. It is formed by the principle of the didactic authority of the teacher and is legitimised insofar as it coincides with the authority of the moral law, which is universal and immutable. As a way of realising the moral law, discipline imposes itself and thus becomes self-​discipline. It begins with the recognition of the moral and cultural authority of the teacher and represents the ethical moment of knowledge acquisition that is the teaching-​learning process and the development of spiritual self-​formation. The figure of the teacher and his action are decisive: ‘the method is the teacher; the discipline is the teacher: it is his soul that dominates, in which the pupils forget their little closed, individual world, almost forgetting to be what they are, in feeling what the teacher is for all of them’ (Lombardo Radice

(pp. 18–​19 and 20). This initial position, still totally faithful to the thought of Gentile, would be revised in later works, also due to the influence of some Italian scholars. According to Borghi (1968), ‘Salvemini’s influence was, among others, a solicitation he received to develop deep personal needs, to perceive the existence of a broader theme than the idealistic one, to grasp the one-​sidedness of those positions, to attempt internal overcoming: thus initiating a process that would have no end in Lombardo Radice’s spiritual itinerary’ (p. 586).

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1913–​193616, p. 17). According to Lombardo Radice, therefore, discipline is the teacher; in other words his example and concrete action, respectful of the pupils’ inner needs as it is, is capable of becoming their own conscience, adhering to it and awakening it. The example of the teacher and a good interpersonal relationship therefore provide the conditions required for the development of the young person’s process of self-​education. To educate means to promote self-​education in the pupil: he/​she can never be an ‘imitator’, or a passive ‘repeater’ of others or something else, but is a creative and unrepeatable individual, a consciousness of humanity, a ‘person’ in action. The teacher, for his part, can never be an ‘executor of programmes’, but is an explorer of souls, that is, an authentic educator. In Lombardo Radice’s vision, the activity of the teacher takes on the meaning of a mission: teacher and pupil are truly such when they manage to merge into a single entity, into a single constructive programme of work and development. The controversial Gentile’s formula of the unification of teacher and schoolboy (destined to expand to the point of identification with the absolute spirit) is developed by Lombardo Radice with a richness of concrete observations as well as with a relevant personal pathos that often borders on emphasis. The transition from empirical diversity to a ‘unification or identification, insofar as the act of education means’ (Lombardo Radice 1916–​19234b, p. 38) is placed in the context of a plurality comprised of different subjects, each of which bears different needs and influences. Elevating the individual to an identity-​unification with the absolute appears to him as a metaphysical-​religious task: this is why he compares the mission of the teacher to that of the ‘lay priest’. A true teacher is one who knows how to be a ‘seeker’ and ‘creator’ of souls, who knows how to penetrate the soul of each pupil and how to grow with it. In a work of 1916, Lombardo Radice reiterated that every authentic teacher (regardless of the institution in which he works) must be a ‘seeker’ of souls: ‘He must penetrate the soul of the pupil (of the individual pupil), so that his word may fall [...] at the right time and in the best way. The teacher is thus essentially a seeker of souls. He is first before the unknown. Yes, he loves them, even unknown ones, because they are the children he knows he has to acquire for his homeland, to increase the forces by which it realises the universal spirit of man [...]. But this love with which he surrounds his pupils, who from the first hour feel drawn into the aura of his enthusiasm, must be nourished unceasingly by his work. And his great work is to make them known to the unknown, intimate to strangers, to raise them with his soul [...] and their souls open only because his has opened up to them [...] only by virtue of this holy fatherhood’ (Lombardo Radice 1916–​19234b, pp. 163–​164).

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A few years earlier, he had argued –​with much greater emphasis and using some expressions that Cives (1970) described in some cases as ‘disconcerting’ (p. 106) –​that a true teacher is one who ‘feels himself to be a creative spirit; he has the will of the divine, which arises from the coincidence of souls. Therefore educating is a priesthood’ (Lombardo Radice 1923a, p. 21). In his early writings, Lombardo Radice had represented the figure of the teacher in almost religious terms and with considerable emphasis:  a lay priest who performs a ‘divine’ mission, who exercises spiritual paternity and is animated by inextinguishable pedagogi-​ cal love for his pupils. His strong idealistic faith, combined with an uncommon educational passion, seems to override the realistic vision that will be partially recovered in his later and better-​known works. As Cives (1970) pointed out, the issue of ‘collaboration’ finds ample development in these works (particularly in Lezioni di didattica), as ‘respect for individualities, their empowerment in the meeting (of “souls” and not a single, universal “soul”)’ (p. 107). However, there is still no lack of representations of the teacher as a ‘lay saint’ (due to the ‘domestic virtues shining in the honourable poverty of his home’), who works with ‘priestly charity’ and through his own action and example spreads civilisation among the young pupils, their families and the wider local environment (Lombardo Radice 1913–​193616, p. 63). Again according to Lombardo Radice, the elementary teacher who wants to be considered as such should love his pupils, support them all, work with everyone and promote bonds of collaboration. The very formation of ‘discipline’ entails the ‘fellowship’ of pupils with each other, in other words the organic and working unity of the class. The pupils must not remain estranged, separate, or isolated from each other, but must come together and thus collaborate, forming a family, that is a living organism. The true teacher, while helping the weaker pupils, knows that he is also working for the stronger ones. He should not worry excessively about the time he will need, for he must support everyone and devote himself to everyone. The heterogeneity that life constantly presents is a useful condition and one to be willingly accepted: only in varied and differentiated collaboration is the most fruitful ‘spiritual communion’ realised, and only in this do pupils seek each other and feel solidarity, so that the work of each becomes the work of all. Heterogeneity is a good thing to have: if it were missing, the very spiritual richness of men would be missing, as would be competition, emulation and the drive forward. In schools too, the greater the variety of pupils, the greater the potential of teaching, and the more organic and lasting the relationships of collaboration and joint research. Good school education is not achieved through the application of a predetermined method, however original it may be, but through the presence and

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activity of real teachers: the problem of schooling then is not one of methods but of personality. The ‘art of teaching’ does not depend on knowledge or the application of pre-​established rules, but on the culture that each teacher manages to develop in his or her thinking and the ability to continuously renew it. The ability of the ‘artist teacher’ is therefore conditioned by the humanity he or she knows how to realise in him or herself. For the Sicilian pedagogist, special importance is given to the lesson: it is ‘the whole teacher’, it sets the tone for his work and proves the openness of his soul to the soul of others. It is ‘the whole teacher’ because it manifests his knowledge of himself and others, the capacity for open and constructive dialogue, collaboration and commitment, as well as the constant striving for human elevation. The pedantic lesson, abstract and coldly prepared in books, never speaks to anyone. The teacher must therefore not start from the textbook or consider it as the presupposition and basis of his teaching. Instead, he must start from the student’s world, from what the student knows, from his current experience. As the Catanian pedagogist wrote: ‘The teacher’s book is not what is composed before he teaches, but what is being composed in the act of teaching: that is, the pupils’ own learning; their minds unfolding. Thus, in the course of his work he recalls the pages already written in those souls, questioning them, so that they reveal their defects and their merits; and he provides for the continuation of the work, preparing new elements’ (Lombardo Radice 1913–​193616, pp. 118–​119). The teacher must never fall into mnemonism or notionism:  he must speak the language of reality to his pupils and never forget that he ‘does not teach a symbolic pupil, in an abstract school’ (Lombardo Radice 1913–​193616, p. 123). Like the artist engaged in creating his works, he must ‘search in the soul of the pupil, to draw from him the problem, to which the lesson wants to give an answer’ (Lombardo Radice 1913–​193616, p. 126). Although the figure of the teacher and the lesson occupy a privileged place in Lombardo Radice’s pedagogy, his attempt to shift the centre of the school towards the pupils, increasingly considered in their concrete singularity, is evident. If the lesson is understood as invention and collaboration and the school is experienced as a laboratory where everyone is a fellow worker, the problem of teaching aids also finds its just and opportune solution. Every teaching aid is useful and convenient as long as it does not replace the work of the teacher, or negate the lesson, or the pupil is not forced to study at home and then report back to school. In the latter case, in fact, the only teacher would be the author of the book: the pupil could follow it but not as he would follow the lesson in class. Lombardo Radice reserves special attention for the teacher in training, in particular identifying the fundamental qualities he must acquire: a living and active

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preparation, a mind/​soul open to the complex and rich reality of humanity, a lucid awareness that the world is renewed and progresses only through educational commitment. His educative art and moral virtue are the outcomes of a professional preparation based on philosophy and the inseparable unity of all philosophical disciplines (including pedagogy), which prove fundamental to his spiritual formation. The secret of the true teacher does not lie solely in his ability to teach, but in the entire conduct of his life. It is for this reason that Lombardo Radice (1913–​1936)16 concludes with an expression that has remained famous: ‘be a man, you will be an educator’ (p. 64). One is not born a teacher but becomes one, and becoming one is a choice, not a natural and, so to speak, ineluctable vocation3. Being a teacher is a continuous process of becoming a teacher: through the living experience of the school, through ‘collaboration’ with others and through the self-​formation of one’s own personality. A true teacher is one ‘who every day makes himself a teacher’, better understanding his own soul and that of his pupils, always enlarging the horizons of his experience and thus feeling himself to be an ‘instrument of an educating community’, a ‘collaborator’, a missionary rather than a tradesman. Self-​education therefore is not only a matter for the pupil, but also for the teacher who wants to live up to his mission. If education is the ‘interpenetration of souls’, this principle also applies to the community of teachers. The ‘fellowship’ of pupils must in fact be complemented by the ‘fellowship’ of teachers: collaboration between them is indispensable for effective educational action. As Cives (1970) reiterates, Lombardo Radice’s discourse ‘is, once again, a discourse within the school, of experience and common sense. A discourse of concrete possibilities, an appeal to measure and availability’ (p. 116). In his thought, the typically Gentile concept of the unity of teaching is translated in terms of cooperation and coordination between teachers. The aim is to activate fruitful collaboration, so that each teacher not only respects the work of colleagues, but also succeeds in making use of it. In this respect, the headmaster plays a key role.

3 The concept of vocation is strongly criticised by Lombardo Radice (1913–​1936)16, according to whom ‘too much rhetoric has been made especially about the teachers‘ vocation, as if it were an innate disposition, an obscure call of the individual’s nature to the mission of teacher: a predestination’ (p. 66). His rejection is expressed in the name of that spiritual organisation that each man creates in himself, as a ‘perennial formation’ of his own humanity, of his own affirmation as a man.

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The representation of the headmaster between ‘discipline’ and ‘collaboration’ Towards the end of the 19th century, the figure of the headmaster (called the ‘direttore didattico’) had become established in elementary schools: not provided for by the law instituting the Italian school system (law n. 3725 of 1859, known as ‘Casati’s law’), it had arisen through the initiative of various municipal admin-​ istrations (to which the law assigned the management of elementary schools) in order to ensure didactic and administrative coordination of teachers’ work. A law of 1903 made the position compulsory in the larger municipalities, recognising it as an instrument of local school administration. The role was awarded through a competitive process to teachers meeting certain requirements. To understand Lombardo Radice’s representation of the figure of the headmaster as a school authority, it is first necessary to frame it in neo-​idealist thought and in particular within the interpretation given to the relationship between authority and freedom. As is well known, in Gentile’s thought, freedom is a metaphysical idea: it is purely of the spirit, of the universal, of the whole, and not of the individual. For this reason, freedom is identified a priori with authority, the expression of the spirit. Gentile (1908) explained: ‘an individual is autonomous not insofar as he determines himself as an individual, because the determination of the individual, as such, is not free, but dependent on causes and motives. The individual, as such, is still nature; and nature is governed by determinism. The spirit, which is universal, is free; and the individual as such is free’ (p. 109). Freedom is therefore to be understood as freedom of the spirit and is not opposed to authority. For the individual, freedom means adherence to that inner law that guides them to overcome their individualistic ‘I/​Ego’ and subdue their sensitive nature to realise the spirit. For Lombardo Radice as well (1916–​19234b), there is no conflict between authority and freedom, and the moment of authority cannot be eliminated: both as a ‘position of orders that the individual imparts to himself ’ (both in ‘self-​restraint’ to consistency with his own ideas and in an ever-​ improving solidarity with others), and as a ‘position of orders that the individual imparts to other individuals’ (to ensure respect for the principles that regulate the life of the community). In school, when an authentic act of education takes place, it involves the pupil’s inner adherence to that law, which is interior and universal, and which therefore guarantees freedom and, at the same time, discipline. Consequently, the pupil is free when he allows himself to be guided by the teacher, since by following the teacher’s spirit he is only spontaneously following his own. The authority of the educator, when it is truly such, is resolved in the process of the pupil’s liberation. Authority stands not in contrast to freedom, but

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represents a moment of freedom, that is, a moment of conscience. The same is true for teachers with regard to the headmaster, who is ‘the living instrument of the educating spirit’ but also the legal and administrative head of the schools entrusted to him. The head of an institute represents that ‘spiritual value’ to which ‘the lower and different values’ present in the school must adapt to draw fully, in turn, from the exercise of authentic freedom. It is therefore legitimate that there be in schools an authority that ‘admonishes, advises, reprimands, punishes and rewards’ (Lombardo Radice 1916–​19234b, p. 53). Authority and freedom are thus two aspects of the same process, that is, of the relationship that spontaneously takes place in school life. An indispensable condition for education is discipline: but not as a presupposition, rather as an effect, since education itself involves discipline. Where there is an authentic act of education, it is an unfailing outcome, otherwise the education could not take place as a unifying and spirit-​growing act. Discipline is a law immanent to the act of the spirit: it is not to be imposed, but naturally accepted. It is never a matter to be resolved by external or coercive means, for it is always an inner fact. Discipline is, in the end, the school itself in action: there is no culture or advancement or fellowship when it is imposed from the outside and is not felt as the very law of living and the basis of action. For the headmaster, education and culture are the indispensable means of deepening one’s own and others’ consciousness, of acquiring the clarity and depth that derive from the organicity of thought: in other words, they are the conditions that legitimise his position. Having reached higher levels of consciousness, greater culture, greater understanding of spiritual law, and therefore of greater self-​actualisation, allows the leader to exercise authority over others who have not attained equal levels of awareness. The common origin in the spirit, and the common tendency towards this, allow the relationship that is established between headmaster and teachers to be necessarily harmonious, since the premises for a violation of freedom do not exist. In school, relationships necessarily become educational for these different levels of consciousness. The common ideal towards which, more or less consciously, headmaster, teachers and pupils tend is the attainment of full humanity, which is synonymous with full spirituality and self-​awareness. In a passage from Lezioni di didattica, Lombardo Radice (1913–​ 1936)16, starting from these premises, outlines ‘his’ image of the headmaster and the significance of the presence of this ‘authority’ among teachers:  ‘The headmaster of a school or a group of schools, if he is really that living instrument of the unity of the educating spirit, which we consider necessary, and not a bureaucratic person who limits his activity to registers, report cards, notes, protocols, inventories, supplies, and a thousand similar things  –​which are also of great

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value, when they are not his only occupation, having become external to the soul of the school; –​has an office, and to fulfil this he needs the same creative power that is proper to the teacher’ (p. 45). Like the teachers (from whose ranks he comes), the headmaster must have ‘creative power’, since this enables him to promote (as the ‘instrument of the educating spirit’) the unification of the educational forces within the school. As a society, or, better, as a community of young people and adults, the school must count on the unity of intent of its various components and must develop through collaboration between the teacher and his pupils, but also between the teachers themselves and between the various classes of the institute: ‘the discipline of a class is therefore integrated into the discipline of the institute; and the discipline of the institute is called the collaboration of the teachers, just as that of the class is called the collaboration of the pupils’ (Lombardo Radice 1913–​193616, p. 44). In order to promote discipline and coordinate the many forms of collaboration, Lombardo Radice (1913–​1936)16 presents –​once again in concrete terms –​the tasks of the headmaster, in other words the authority called upon to direct a group of teachers and elementary classes: ‘To get to know the teachers and win their hearts, so as to be able with affectionate confidence to incite and correct them; to be for them the father, from whom they expect support and protection in the painful difficulties that the educational mission offers, the teacher whose measured but sincere praise means the consecration of a laborious victory; to intervene in the inevitable contrasts between the teacher and families, to make the school’s point of view triumph over inferior points of view, which the teacher defends in impartial judgement; to moderate the punitive or doctrinal excitement of teachers who lose spiritual contact with their pupils; to play down rhetoric, the professional disease of men of letters; to eliminate latent or overt disagreements between the various teachers; to bring the teaching staff together so that it can coordinate the work of the various classes and discuss in depth the school’s most delicate subjects (the choice of textbooks and teaching aids); to make the teachers get to know each other’s work, visiting each other during teaching, exchanging classes, studying the pupils’ demonstrations and discussing them together; to visit the classes, not for an external control of the regulatory point of the development of the programme, understood as quantity, but to get to know his teachers’ souls more deeply and never lose sight of the pupils, the last and first inspirers of his work’ (p. 45). Pedagogical functions and bureaucratic duties are intertwined in the professional profile of a figure Lombardo Radice compares to that of a father following his children: a benevolent but serious authority, affectionate but impartial, gentle yet severe, firm and authoritative, ‘inspiring and moderating’. A father but even

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more a master (‘teacher of teachers’), the headmaster must get to know the teachers of his Institute, stimulate and support their teaching practice, encourage and promote their spirit of collaboration. He is first and foremost called upon to gain the confidence of his teachers, supporting them in the difficulties of their work and in their relations with colleagues and families. Where conflicts arise, he must be able to assess them with impartiality and manage to settle disagreements wisely, letting the elementary interest of the school and the pupils, who are his constant reference, prevail. His praise, always measured, will be particularly significant and welcome, but –​where necessary –​he must also resort to reprimands and corrections. He must also know how to moderate certain reprehensible behaviour, such as didactic excesses and uncontrolled recourse to punishment, practised by teachers who have lost spiritual harmony with their pupils. It will be necessary for him to periodically visit classes, not for a fiscal control, but above all to get to know directly teachers and pupils, didactic progress and the relational climate. Lastly, the headmaster has the task of organising meetings and gatherings with the teachers of his circle, both for the fulfilment of traditional school tasks (the start and end of the school year, examinations, the choice of textbooks, etc.) and to foster coordination and collaboration between them, to be achieved, for example, by comparing teaching experiences, discussing individual pupils’ cases or even through occasional school exchanges. Alongside the functions of a pedagogical nature, Lombardo Radice did not neglect to mention bureaucratic and administrative tasks, the value of which –​ as he observed –​remained ‘very great’, even if it was necessary to prevent them from occupying the entire management activity. Finally, he entrusted the headmaster with looking after the school’s image externally and the task of procuring the necessary resources for his institute. In fact, it is the task of the headmaster ‘to make the school appear before the public as a complete and organic whole, so that it may become almost an example, in the conscience of all, of enlightened school government; to ask, with the strength of the consent of the teachers and the reputation of the school, for adequate means from the authorities who too often skimp on them; to interpret the school laws and programmes, so that the school may live the spirit, and not the letter, calling the teachers to collaborate in this work, both in formal meetings and in daily conversation: –​this is the great work of those who direct’ (Lombardo Radice 1913–​193616, p. 46). Lombardo Radice hoped that the headmaster would be committed to creating a cultural tradition in the Institute and to fostering a positive public image, based on the quality of the education offered and on specific initiatives open to the local community. Rather than a hierarchical superior, the headmaster appears to be an animator capable of giving centrality to collaboration as a way of life in

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the Institute. He also proposes himself as an enlightened guide in the application of laws, programmes and regulations, for his ability to interpret the spirit of the rules more than the letter, to constantly involve the teachers in the Institute’s various activities and to acquire their consent and active participation. If it is true that in Lombardo Radice, Gentile’s identification of authority and freedom and the associated risk of the prevalence of authority (as the interpreter of the universal spirit) are still present, it is also true that he knows how to recover the freedom denied to the individual through an empirical valorisation of all those ‘concrete freedoms’ that arise from dialogue, synergy, and collaboration between the protagonists of school life. The relationship between subjects certainly remains problematic, because it is always in flux: however, it finds its composition in dialogue and collaboration. The indication is still to enhance originality and sincerity in each subject and foster the awakening of that creative dimension linked to the ability to express, in an entirely individual and perennially new way, the tension of the spirit. Again according to Lombardo Radice, only in this way can one reach the highest form of human freedom, which does not consist in being dependent on the law, but in creating the law, that is, in understanding it as an expression of the logical necessity of the absolute and in considering it as one’s own, thus rediscovered in the substratum of one’s humanity.

Conclusion This representation of the figure of the teacher and the headmaster certainly appears dated and linked to a philosophical-​pedagogical orientation of the past. The ‘charismatic’ model advocated by Lombardo Radice, based on mission, apostolate, exemplarity, and total dedication to the school, has long since been in crisis, just as the thesis of the formation of ‘being a man’ to become a teacher appears outdated. It is an example of teacher-​training that excludes all non-​humanistic disciplines, neglects the sciences of education, and denies methodological-​operational skills. The socio-​cultural context in which Lombardo Radice operated is certainly very far removed from our own, yet his work still retains a high moral and cultural significance for schools. Within neo-​ idealism, he was able to defend the reason of the individual, of the principle of collaboration, of the importance of experience, and of didactics. His lesson retains many topical elements: from the need to keep the relationship between theory and practice, pedagogy and didactics, knowing and doing alive in education to the call to restore centrality to the school, while also being open to other educational contexts in society. Beyond the rhetoric typical of the era, his call to reflect on the figures of the teacher and headmaster, on their functions and the

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need for them to nurture that spirit of collaboration, is confirmed, yesterday as today, as the ‘secret’ of a good school.

References Borghi, L. (1968): Lombardo Radice e Salvemini. In: Scuola e Città 19 (12), pp. 581–​604. Cives, G. (1970): Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. Didattica e pedagogia della collaborazione. Firenze. Gentile, G. (1908): Scuola e filosofia. Palermo. Hessen, H. (trad. 1960): L’idealismo pedagogico in Italia. Roma. Lombardo Radice, G. (1913–​193616): Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale. Palermo. Lombardo Radice, G. (1923a): Il concetto dell’educazione (1910). In: Educazione e diseducazione. Saggi. Firenze. Lombardo Radice, G. (1916–​19234b):  L’ideale educativo e la scuola nazionale. Lezioni di pedagogia generale fondata sul concetto di autoeducazione. Firenze.

Section 2 The European Context

Yasmina Álvarez-​González

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and his reception in Spain in the first third of the 20th century1 Abstract

In this chapter the reception of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice in Spain is studied. Rather than attempting a quantitative analysis of research that makes reference to the Italian educationalist and his work, we focus instead on what was published in Spain and the degree to which he was considered an important pedagogical figure in the first third of the century. Keywords: pedagogy, Lombardo Radice, Spain, reception, international influences

Lombardo Radice’s reception in Spain came about in the late 1920s with the nearly consecutive publication of two of his books, La reforma escolar italiana [The Italian School Reform] in 1927 and Líneas Generales de Filosofía de la Educación [General Trends in the Philosophy of Education] in 1928. The first of these books, published by the pedagogical publishing house La Lectura2 (created in 1913 and taken over in 1930 by Espasa-​Calpe), was translated by María Victoria Jiménez, a professor at the teacher training school associated with the journal Revista de Escuelas Normales, one of the pre-​eminent pedagogical publications of the pre-​war period. She provided its prologue and she refers to Lombardo Radice as ‘a man of action, with independent criteria’ (Lombardo Radice 1927, p. 5). The publication of the second book was also linked to an important pedagogical journal of the time, Lorenzo Luzuriaga’s Revista de Pedagogía. Translated into Spanish by Concepción Sainz Amor and with an introduction by Luzuriaga himself, Líneas Generales de Filosofía de la Educación was published in 1928 by the publisher associated with this journal. We can see, therefore, that Lombardo

1 This study was carried out within the framework of the Proyecto Nacional de I+D+i El giro copernicano en la política de educación y ciencia en el desarrollismo franquista: de la subsidiariedad a la intervención estatal (PID2020-​114249GB-​I00). 2 According to Francisco Fuster (2015), Domingo Barnés was a member of the journal’s committee and chief editor in its later years.

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Radice’s introduction into Spain was driven by important elements in the pedagogical establishment of the period. In her review of the book La reforma escolar italiana in the journal Revista de Pedagogía, Concepción Sainz Amor praises Lombardo Radice’s approach: ‘while it may well be a disconnected, inconsistent and frayed work, it is also brimming with faith, vitality, a spot-​on vision of the subject and common sense, elements that so often go missing in the most carefully elaborated works’ (Sainz Amor 1928a, p. 88). In this same review we find a note by the journal’s directors drawing our attention to the fact that Lombardo Radice was already known in Spain: ‘Although the translator speaks of “introducing Lombardo Radice into Spain”, we should point out that long before this translation, our journal had already done so, through the publication of his articles and reviews of his works’ (Sainz Amor 1928a, p. 90). Several years later, in 1933, the publisher Labor published Lecciones de didáctica [Lessons on didactics] in a translation by Pablo Martínez de Salinas. An unidentified editor emphasises, in a preface to the book, Lombardo Radice’s popularity in Spain. ‘We do not believe it necessary to present to our esteemed readers the brilliant figure of Lombardo Radice, given that he is widely known both as an eminent teacher and as the direct inspiration for the transformation of the Italian school known as the Gentile Reform (preface)’. As we can see, a decade after his work had been introduced, Lombardo Radice had become well-​known in Spain. Further proof of this can be found in the 1928 book Las escuelas nuevas italianas [The New Italian Schools], by Concepción Sainz Amor. In this publication the author makes numerous references to the Italian educationalist, citing many of his works and offering descriptions of Lombardo Radice as ‘an artist and a sharp, idealist thinker’ (8), and ‘a clever, brilliant searcher’ (11). Concepción Sainz Amor also refers to Lombardo Radice in his explanation of the term escuela serena [serene school]. Clearly, Concepción Sainz Amor was keen to disseminate the work of the Italian educationalist. Lombardo Radice was also included in the two principal pedagogical encycl-​ opedias of the time. His appearance, with a brief biography, in both the Diccionario de Pedagogía [Dictionary of Education] published by Labor (1936) and the Diccionario de Pedagogía put out by Losada (1936) attest to his having become a point of reference in Spanish pedagogy. But just as important as the publication of his books was the dissemination of Lombardo Radice’s thought through references in the prominent pedagogical journals of the period. These included both the Revista de Pedagogía and the Revista de Escuelas Normales. The order of exposition begins with the articles

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written by Lombardo Radice, followed by those written about him and, finally, the reviews and references to his works appearing in publications. The April 1926 issue of Revista de Pedagogía contained an article titled ‘Consejos a los maestros’ [Advice for Teachers], written by Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. The author defends the practice of art in schools and stresses the role that artistic education can play in calming the soul. He also gives advice on teaching languages and on grammatical exercises. Footnotes to the article highlight his importance as well as his position as Direttore generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare and a close collaborator of Giovanni Gentile (Lombardo Radice 1926, p. 145). In October 1927 the same journal included an article, La falsa libertad y la libertad verdadera en Educación [False Freedom and True Freedom in Education] in which Lombardo Radice defends the idea that each child has his or her own idiosyncrasy with regard to the adult, one that leads them to strive to be at the same level. However, one has to avoid the child’s adopting ‘an attitude of pure veneration or passive admiration, of servile acceptance or superficial imitation’. But these risks do not justify losing sight of the ‘awareness of the child’s subordination to the adult’ (1927, p. 470). He also expounds on the figure of the teacher and the disciple, on individual work and on the program. He explains the way that the new education offers the child the thoughts of great men and he sees every child as an original soul, whatever they choose to do, whether they become a poet, or a scientist… Lombardo Radice makes an analogy with terrain, des-​ cribing how the programme is the terrain in which the child tries things out and that a good programme provides the child with more options to try. He explains that individual work that does not take into account the collective programme will lead to a false sense of freedom that will only weaken the child. In an article titled El folklore y la educación de los niños en Italia [Folklore and Childhood Education in Italy], published approximately a year after the September 1928 issue, Lombardo Radice draws attention to the renewed interest in folklore resulting from the Gentile Reform and its amendment by Pietro Fedele. In addition to these articles penned by Lombardo Radice himself, we find numerous works referring to his figure and his ideas. The Revista de Pedagogía from 1924, for examples, carries the article Pedagogos contemporáneos: Giovanni Gentile [Contemporary Educationalists:  Giovanni Gentile], in which Orencio Muñoz expounds on the rebirth of Italian studies and the militant idealism of Lombardo Radice, among others. This same article cites Lombardo Radice’s work Lezioni di didattica and its difference from Gentile’s Sommario, in terms of philosophical dualism. In the second part of this article Muñoz emphasises the defence and impetus that Lombardo Radice and Gentile have given to Italian

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culture by supporting the cause wholeheartedly through every possible means (books, conferences…). In the Selected Bibliography of the same issue of the same journal, the section on Pedagogical Studies and foreign publications includes a work by Lombardo Radice titled Educazione e diseducazione (Muñoz 1924a). Lombardo Radice’s presence in the Revista de Pedagogía continues in 1925. Once again it is Orencio Muñoz who in his article La reforma escolar italiana [The Italian School Reform] names Lombardo Radice (in a footnote by the editor) in relation to an article on Italian school reform that he was meant to submit together with Gentile. In the text Lombardo Radice is defined as ‘an enthusiast and extremely competent educationalist’ (Muñoz 1925a, p. 152). Quotes are also taken from Lombardo Radice’s La Riforma Gentile e la nouva aníma della scuola [The Gentile reform and the new soul of school]. Muñoz continues the article in the next month’s issue, citing several works. An article from April 1927, written by Giovanni Vidari and titled Ferrante Aporti y el problema de la educación de los párvulos en Italia [Ferrante Aporti and the Problem of Child Education in Italy] contains a footnote that presents the author Vidari (Professor of the University of Turin) and provides an overview of the representatives of the principal pedagogical currents, where Lombardo Radice is referred to as the representative of Hegelian idealism. In an issue from December 1929, we find his name mentioned again in the section ‘More on the education of today and tomorrow’, which provides a glimpse of the panorama of educational approaches in different countries. From Spain, we find mention of Francisco Giner and Manuel B. Cossío, while the Italian figures named are Luigi Credaro, Giovanni Gentile and Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. The author says of them, ‘[…] they confer to pedagogy and education a dignity that they were lacking until now. Thanks to them and to many others whom we shall not name here, pedagogy has found its place in the universities, and teacher-​training will soon be a university career that is given the same consideration as any other socially respected professions’ (1929, p. 568). In January 1930 the Revista de Escuelas Normales published an article titled El educador italiano G. Lombardo Radice [The Italian Educationalist G. Lombardo Radice] in its section ‘The classics and moderns in Pedagogy’. The subject is presented as a ‘Faithful interpreter of Gentilian thought [...]. If we add to this the Italian-​ness of his spirit, his rich and varied writing, his joviality and noble kindness –​those traditional qualities of great educationalists ‒ it is no wonder that such stature is accorded to this great thinker and teacher’ (1930, p. 19). The inclusion of Lombardo Radice here shows the degree to which he was considered a pre-​eminent thinker in Italy. The article gives a summary of his different posts, of the journals that he was or had been directing and his most

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important works. It concludes with a list of his works –​including two in Spanish –​ so that the journal’s readers could know his writings first-​hand. The December 1935 issue of the Revista de Escuelas Normales contains a transcription of a paper read by Mariano Sáez Morillo on ‘The formation of primary teachers in Spain’, given as part of the Science and Education sessions at the Universidad Internacional de Santander and the ‘Cultural meetings of Spanish and foreign teachers’. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice is described as ‘an illustrious figure’, his name being paired with others such as Giovanni Gentile and Maria Montessori. The author’s goal here is to have these figures invited to the International Congress on Pedagogy that is going to be held in 1939. Morillo explains that their presence would be a boost for the congress and that perhaps an exchange could be made, showing them in turn the methods used in the teacher training schools in Spain. In speaking about the reform, the author refers to Lombardo Radice as a great educationalist. In October 1931, on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, the journal Revista de Pedagogía took a look at different pedagogical publications, among them the series ‘La pedagogía contemporánea’, in which Lombardo Radice is named alongside others such as Dewey, acknowledging their role as ‘eminent representatives of pedagogical thought’ of the time. A year later, in October 1932, a section dedicated ‘to our readers’ makes reference to a work that will pay homage to Decroly, with the participation of Lombardo Radice. Lombardo Radice was in charge of the journal L’educazione nazionale, Organo di studio dell’educazione nuova, a position acknowledged by other journals. The foreign section of the November 1924 issue makes mention of his position at the publication, an indication that his professional trajectory was being followed. The brief note alludes to criticism levelled at Lombardo Radice, who ‘from his journal has launched a defence of his directorship, attacked by some figures from the professional press’ (Revista de Pedagogía 1924, p. 440). More information is published in L’educazione nazionale in October 1926, including news about the joint publication of a competition promoted by the Revista de Pedagogía to commemorate the centenary of Pestalozzi. This would seem to indicate an amicable relationship between the two journals, as does the fact that the December issue refers to Lombardo Radice as a collaborator for the first time. But there was also an institutional element to the link between the Revista de Pedagogía and Lombardo Radice, due to the fact that he was a member of the International Committee of the LIEN [International League of New Education], whose official means of communication in Spain was this same journal (April 1927 issue). Thus Luzuriaga shared a position with Lombardo Radice on the International Committee of this association while the journal became a twin

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publication with that published in Italy under Lombardo Radice, L’educazione nazionale, Organo di studio dell’educazione nuova. In the July 1927 issue we find a section titled Journals of New Education, a compendium of all publications belonging to this movement. L’educazione nazionale is included here, as is an article by Lombardo Radice. A review in L’educazione nazionale from the September issue of the same year describes ‘a course in educational hygiene for teachers in Italy’. Notices such as these serve for keeping up to date with developments in Italy and in Lombardo Radice’s career. We also find the summary of an editorial, titled Liga Internacional de Educación Nueva. Revista de Pedagogía [International League of New Education. Revista de Pedagogía], that was published in Pour l’ère nouvelle, run by Adolphe Ferrière. In the editorial Ferrière speaks in the following terms of the two figures, Lombardo Radice and Luzuriaga:  ‘As of early 1927, two eminences, two journals and two countries have found their place in our ranks. The executive committee has welcomed them enthusiastically, hopeful about the fruitful exchange of ideas, services, and experiences that this collaboration is sure to foster. […] They are well aware that there is one proper way, that for science there are no Pyrenees […]. The peace that we all believe in will not be achieved by adults exchanging ideas but rather by constructively finding a greater balance in the spirit of children’ (Editorial 1927, p. 207). The journal looks toward the League again in October 1927. In the section on journals special mention is made of those belonging to the LIEN, among them that headed by the ‘eminent’ Lombardo Radice. Lombardo Radice’s works also receive mention in the April 1924 issue of Revista de Pedagogía, in the Books section. The review provides an overview of what education meant to Lombardo Radice and emphasises his conception of education as ‘a concept that is living, dynamic, spiritual’ (Muñoz 1924c, p. 152). The Revista de Escuelas Normales also discusses the new publications by Lombardo Radice. His work Vita nuova della Scuola del popolo, is covered in the January 1926 issue, in which, in addition to dealing with its contents, the author’s claim that he was merely ‘the notary’ of the famous Italian school reform is underscored. The journal also discusses Quaderni de Pestalozzi, which was overseen by Lombardo Radice and consisted of six notebooks about the Swiss educationalist. The Revista de Pedagogía (1926) included, in the contemporary section of the journal’s Reading List, Lombardo Radice’s book Reforma escolar en Italia, an indication of the interest that his works provoked. Also published as part of La Nueva Educación we find Las escuelas nuevas italianas by Concepción Sainz Amor. In the realm of contemporary pedagogy, his work Líneas generales de

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filosofía de la Educación (1928) is presented alongside others by Dewey and Kerschensteiner, yet another sign of the importance afforded to his work in Spain. In 1928 the same journal carries an article by Concepción Sainz Amor focusing on Las Escuelas Nuevas Italianas and carrying an assertion by the author that what good is to be found in Italian public schools should be attributed to Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, whose many works and positions are also discussed. In April of the following year we also find a review of the book Il problema dell´educazione infantile [The problem of Child Education], including a notice that it would soon be published in Spanish. The book refers to Lombardo Radice in the following manner: ‘there is no question that Lombardo Radice occupies a position front and centre ‒ if not among the pioneers, given that he is not really an elementary school teacher –​certainly among the champions, supporters, defenders and inspirers of the newest educational trends’ (Sainz Amor 1929, p. 185). Although some of these mentions may not seem overly important, we should remember that at the time educationalists followed these publications closely, as it was their only way of keeping abreast of the latest events and novelties in their field. Professional educationalists also relied on such lists to be up to date with the educational advances and publications in other parts of the world. A summary of the publications covered in these journals shows Lombardo Radice to have had a quite complete trajectory, ‘(…) during which he acquired the profile of a multifaceted intellectual, one capable of renewing the role of the teacher and student. He was driven by a kind of thoughtfulness that sought a careful balance between theory and practice, pedagogy and educational action, theology and pedagogical methodology, to the point where he became one of the key figures in the history of Italian pedagogy and the Italian school in the first half of the 20th century’ (Scaglia 2021, p. 8)3. María Victoria Jiménez (a teacher in the Escuela Normal and a key figure in introducing Lombardo Radice in Spain) was of a similar opinion and saw the Italian educationalist as both a great thinker and a man of action. The interest Jiménez had in Italy seems to have stemmed from a visit she made there, after which she spread the news of the Gentile Reform and of the figure of Lombardo Radice throughout Spain (García/​Vilafranca/​Vilanou 2016). A certain tendency existed to couple together Spain and Italy, to see them as two similar countries with comparable problems and analogous solutions. However, María Victoria Jiménez, who had translated and written the prologue for La reforma escolar italiana, held that the two countries were quite oblivious of each

3 [in Italian originally].

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other and that Spaniards were unaware of events taking place in Italy. ‘Rarely does the destination of our pedagogical visits take us in that direction, and while we try to assimilate school ideals and customs from peoples with whom we have scant –​or zero ‒ ethnic affinity, we ignore others, such as the Italians, with whom we could have so much common interest’ (Lombardo Radice 1926, p. 11). This comment is in agreement with the observation by Canales and Zago (2021) that Spain looked primarily towards Germany as the principal source of the production of knowledge. The similarity and accompanying obliviousness of the two countries that Jiménez points out may help explain the publication in Spain of certain works, such as La reforma escolar italiana. We must remember that, of the two journals mentioned here, Revista de Pedagogía carried more publications by Lombardo Radice, possibly owing to the author’s affinity with Luzuriaga. ‘The two men were Lombardo Radice and Luzuriaga; the two journals, L’educazione nazionale and Revista de Pedagogía; the two countries, Italy and Spain. In comparing the two, one had to keep in mind that the Liga could not be labelled an association nor a federation, rather, it was a bond between two educationalists who have an interest, both theoretical and practical, in New Education’ (Viñao 1994–​1995, p. 21). As we have seen, the work and figure of Lombardo Radice received consi-​ derable attention during the pre-​war period in journals as well as in books. As important as his role alongside Gentile in the educational reform was, it is his reputation as a great educationalist with a true knowledge of what a school is that receives special emphasis. We can certainly affirm that he was one of the leading influences on the Spanish pedagogical community during this period. As Canales and Zago (2021) have pointed out, Spanish educationalists showed considerably more interest in Lombardo Radice than in Gentile, partly due to the strong affinity between him and Lorenzo Luzuriaga. After the Civil War and under Franco, Lombardo Radice’s legacy managed to endure, despite the new authorities’ complete razing of the pre-​war pedagogical tradition, including Luzuriaga and his Revista de Pedagogía. Lombardo Radice’s work Lecciones de didáctica appears in the bibliography of the book La escuela grata, by Alfonso Iniesta, one of the foremost authors of post-​war pedagogy. The same volume is included by Eduardo Bernal as one of the few bibliographical references on general didactics in Bernal’s Orientaciones Escolares. Normas para organizar y dirigir una escuela, from 1945. In chapter 23 of this book, which deals with the subject of the school textbook, the author includes a quote from the Italian educationalist, who states that the book is like another teacher.

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The destinies of the educationalists responsible for introducing Lombardo Radice into Spain differed; whereas Orencio Muñoz was exiled in Mexico, Concepción Sainz Amor, translator of La reforma escolar italiana, remained in Spain and completed her thesis in 1945. Pablo Martínez de Salinas was the only survivor of the Department of Pedagogy in Barcelona after the Francoist victory (Álvarez González 2019). Naturally, Lombardo Radice continued to be an influence on Luzuriaga in his exile. In his book Ideas Pedagógicas del Siglo XX (1961), Lorenzo Luzuriaga includes works by Lombardo Radice together with authors such as Dewey and Decroly. The work by Lombardo Radice published here was ‘Consejos a los Maestros’ (‘Advice to teachers’), a volume with its roots in writings that had originally appeared in Revista de Pedagogía, as Luzuriaga explains in his preliminary notes. The articles were selected because they constituted important references in the principal pedagogical trends of the century’s first decades. We also find books written about Lombardo Radice. In Ensayos precursores de la escuela activa italiana: Portomaggiore y Mompiano [Three Pioneers of the New School in Italy:  Portomaggiore and Mompiano, 1949] and Tres heraldos de la nueva educación:  Hermann Lietz, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice y Frantisek Bakule [Three Heralds of the New Education: Hermann Lietz, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and Frantisek Bakule, undated], we see that the educationalists, in addition to important writings of his own, constituted a figure worthy of study by others. Lombardo Radice was a pre-​eminent intellectual in the eyes of the educationalists and journals dealt with in this article, and his presence was assured by the continued publication of his works as well as by references to his figure in the writings of others.

Printed sources Anonymous (1924): Extranjero: Italia. In: Revista de Pedagogía 35, p. 440. Anonymous (1924):  Informaciones:  El cambio ministerial en la Instrucción Pública de Italia. In: Revista de Pedagogía 32, pp. 306–​307. Muñoz, O. (1924c): Libros: G. Lombardo Radice: Educazione e diseducazione. –​ Col. Scuola e Vita –​Firenze, ‘La Voce’. 1923. In: Revista de Pedagogía 28, pp. 152–​154. Muñoz, O. (1924d): Libros: G. Lombardo Radice: Saggi do propaganda política e pedagógica.  –​Palermo, Sandron, 1910. In:  Revista de Pedagogía 32, pp. 312–​316.

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Anonymous (1927): Un curso de Educación higiénica para maestros en Italia. In: Revista de Pedagogía 69, pp. 440–​41. Anonymous (1929): Más sobre la educación de hoy y la de mañana. In: Revista de Pedagogía 96, pp. 566–​568. Anonymous (1930):  El educador italiano G. Lombardo Radice. In:  Revista de Escuelas Normales, pp. 19–​24.

References Álvarez González, Y. (2019): La pedagogía española bajo el primer franquismo, 1939–​1959. Reorientación disciplinar e institucionalización. [Tesis de doctorado]. Universidad de La Laguna. Canales Serrano, A. F./​Zago, G. (2021): Gentile in Spain: An historiographical mirage. In: History of Education and Children’s Literature 16(1), pp. 185–​212. Díez Torre, A. R./​del Pozo Andrés, M. M./​Seguro Redondo, M. (1988):  La ‘Revista de Escuelas Normales’ una publicación de regeneración normalista nacida en Guadalajara (1923–​1936). In: RIFOP: Revista interuniversitaria de formación del profesorado:  continuación de la antigua Revista de Escuelas Normales 1, pp. 9–​30. Editorial. (1927): Liga Internacional de Educación Nueva. Revista de Pedagogía. In: Revista de Pedagogía 64, p. 207. Fernández Soria, J.M. (2006):  Influencias Nacionales Europeas en la Política Educativa Española del Siglo XX. In: Historia de la Educación 24, pp. 39–​95. Recuperado a partir de https://​revis​tas.usal.es/​index.php/​0212-​0267/​arti​cle/​ view/​6660 Fuster, Francisco (2015): Semblanza de Ediciones de La Lectura (1913–​1930). En Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes –​Portal Editores y Editoriales Iberoamericanos (siglos XIX–​XXI) –​ EDI-​RED: http://​www.cerva​ntes​virt​ual.com/​ obra/​edicio​nes-​de-​la-​lect​ura-​1913-​1930-​sembla​nza/​ Garcia, J./​Vilafranca, I./​Vilanou, C. (2016): La recepció de la filosofia de l’educació de Giovanni Gentile: del neo-​idealisme al neo-​espiritualisme. In: Educació i Història. Revista d’Història de l’Educació 27, pp. 179–​222. Lombardo Radice, G. (1926): La reforma escolar italiana. Madrid. Lombardo Radice, J. (1926): Consejos a los maestros. In: Revista de Pedagogía 52, pp. 145–​52. Lombardo Radice, G. (1927): La falsa libertad y la libertad verdadera en la educación. In: Revista de Pedagogía 70, pp. 470–​75. Lombardo Radice, G. (1933): Lecciones de didáctica. Madrid.

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Luzuriaga, L. (1926): La Preparazione de maestri in Spagna. [Reseña del artículo La Preparazione de maestri in Spagna, por O. Muñoz]. In: Revista de Pedagogía 70, pp. 427–​428. Muñoz, O. (1924a): Pedagogos contemporáneos: Giovanni Gentile. In: Revista de Pedagogía 26, pp. 52–​59. Muñoz, O. (1924b): Pedagogos contemporáneos: Giovanni Gentile. In: Revista de Pedagogía 27, pp. 97–​102. Muñoz, O. (1925a): La reforma escolar italiana. In: Revista de Pedagogía 40, pp. 152–​57. Muñoz, O. (1925b): La reforma escolar italiana. In: Revista de Pedagogía 41, pp. 212–​19. Muoz, O. (1926):  Reseña de Luzuriaga, L.:  La preparazione dei maestri in Spagna. Extracto de la Rivista Pedagogica, Roma. In:  Revista de Pedagogía 57, pp. 427–​28. Sáez Morillo, M. (1935): En la Universidad Internacional de Santader, Reuniones culturales del profesorado nacional y etranjero. La formación del Magisterio primario en España. In: Revista de Escuelas Normales, pp. 226–​232. Sainz Amor, C. (1928a). Reseña de ‘La reforma escolar italiana’. In: Revista de Pedagogía 74, pp. 88–​90. Sainz Amor, C. (1928b): Las escuelas nuevas italianas. In: Revista de Pedagogía 83, pp. 502–​07. Sainz Amor, C. (1929). Reseña de ‘Il problema dell´educazione infantile’. In: Revista de Pedagogía 88, pp. 185–​86. Scaglia, E. (2021): Una pedagogia dell’ascesa. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e il suo tempo. Roma. Viñao, A. (1994–​1995):  La modernización pedagógica española a través de la ‘Revista de Pedagogía’ (1922–​1936). In: Anales de Pedagogía 12, pp. 7–​45.

Gabriella D’Aprile

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice –​Adolphe Ferrière. The contentious Swiss-​Italian relationship and their disputes regarding New Education Abstract

This contribution takes an in-​depth look at the conflictual scientific, intellectual and editorial relationship between Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and Adolphe Ferrière, and allows us to reconstruct the network of Italian-​Swiss connections within the international pedagogical renewal movement of New Education and the Active School. Keywords: Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, Adolphe Ferrière, New Education Movement, Italy, Switzerland

Introduction The present contribution focuses on the scientific, intellectual, and propagandist-​ editorial relationship between the two pioneers of New Education and the Active School: Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and Adolphe Ferrière. Both scholars occupy a place of paradigmatic importance in the renewal of education practices and school reform within the framework of early 20th century European pedagogical culture. Today, more than in the past, their memory and legacy have returned to the centre of pedagogical debate thanks to new areas of interest and convergence with contemporary educational research (Lucisano/​Marzano 2022). There are many research directions which remain open and offer promising possibilities for future study. In particular, the analysis of the Lombardo Radice-​Ferrière relationship, which remained unexplored for so many decades and has only recently been investigated (D’Aprile 2019), delivers new avenues for reconstruction/​interpretation to deepen understanding, in an international perspective, of the courants and contre-​courants [trends and countertrends, Hameline 2000] of the New Schools movement in Europe, both to rediscover figures of masters, pedagogues, and militant educators who are little known or have fallen into oblivion (D’Aprile 2010b), and to investigate pedagogical and didactic themes and models that still resonate in the contemporary world (D’Aprile 2008; Tomarchio/​

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D’Aprile 2010, 2011). In this perspective, this essay delivers the most important outcomes from a historical-​pedagogical study carried out on unpublished documentary sources, found in the Fonds Adolphe Ferrière of the Fondation Archives Institut J. J. Rousseau at the University of Geneva1, with the hope of offering new research ideas for the consideration of those who intend to work on Lombardo Radice and Adolphe Ferrière from an international perspective. The link between the two scholars is to be considered as a connection within a broader network of contacts and cultural exchanges that emanated from the prestigious Institut Jean-​Jacques Rousseau, the Geneva base from which radiated the New Education Movement and the avant-​garde educational and psychological ideas and practices in Europe (Lussi/​Muller/​Kiciman 2002). From the correspondence between the two scholars, certain aspects that recall the network of Italian-​Swiss connections for the promotion of the ideas of the international New School movement can be deduced. In addition to offering traces of a human dialogue, the correspondence constitutes a documentation of historical-​pedagogical importance, as studying the correlation between scenarios in private life and glimpses of the ‘official’ cultural life helps enrich the reconstruction. The epistolary relationship between Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and Adolphe Ferrière has many nuances: it is sometimes formal-​official in tone, sometimes a cultural confrontation on educational issues, sometimes strictly propagandistic-​ publishing related, and sometimes focused on personal experiences and punctuated by biographical accounts and private confidences. There is also no lack of aspects of heated ideological polemics, often triggered by political issues, especially in addressing educational questions and problems that concern Italian schools, as in the case of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s non-​participation in important international initiatives, such as the Congress of the Ligue internationale pour l’Éducation Nouvelle (LIEN), held in Locarno in 1927 (Ferrière 1927;

1

The Fonds Adolphe Ferrière, presented by the Fondation Archives Institut J. J. Rousseau of the University of Geneva, was donated in March 1982 by Ferrière’s son (Claude Ferrière) to the Faculty of Psychologie et de sciences de l’éducation (FPSE). The Fondation Archives Institut J.J. Rousseau (AIJJR) was established in 1984 under the aegis of the FPSE and entrusted to professors Daniel Hameline and Mireille Cifali for the project of collecting and preserving the remaining archives of the Institut J.J. Rousseau, founded in 1912 by Edouard Claparède. On the international front, the AIJJR constitutes one of the richest documentation and research sites on the Education nouvelle movement and hosts diversified documentary resources to reconstruct the history of Educational Sciences in Europe during the 20th century.

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Sweetser 1927). In this particular case, the tone of the letters becomes bitter and covert, bringing out the great political contradictions of Italy’s cultural history during the years when the fascist regime was gaining ascendancy.

The Swiss-​Italian relationship and their discussions on New Education The correspondence between Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and Adolphe Ferrière spans almost a decade and covers a period from the early 1920s to the early 1930s. In particular, the relationship between the two correspondents was already established towards the end of 1923. The first letter we have evidence of bears the date 3 January 1924 and consists of a reply from Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, Direttore generale dell’Istruzione elementare e popolare, to a letter from Ferrière congratulating him on the Programmi per l’istruzione elementare, within the framework of the Gentile Reform (1923). By carefully examining the letters in the timespan from 1924 to 1931, a dominant motif that we can define as propagandistic-​editorial emerges for the exchange of ideas, news, announcements of scientific publications, consultations on the pedagogical propaganda of the New Education movement and the realisation and printing of important publishing projects under the banner of the active school. Among the latter is the Italian translation, edited by Elda Mazzoni (referred to by Lombardo Radice in a letter dated 19 May 1926 as ‘the best, the most talented of my disciples’), of Adolphe Ferrière’s well-​known publication L’École active (1922), and the French translation project, achieved through the mediation of Pierre Bovet, of the volume Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale (1913), in the Institut J.J. Rousseau series of the Collection d’actualités pédagogique et psychologiques2 [Collection of new developments in pedagogy and psychology updates]. The history of this scientific association can be seen in detail from certain letters that are a mine of information on the genesis, editorial developments, and

2 The first work in the Collection Actualités pédagogiques et psychologiques, published in 1912 under the auspices of the Institut J.J. Rousseau, published in Paris by Delachaux et Niestlé, is the translation of Maria Montessori’s well-​known Italian publication Les Case dei Bambini. La méthode de la pédagogie scientifique appliquée a l’éducation des tout petits (original title: Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini). The other Italian work is the translation of Lombardo Radice’s book, Les petits Fabre de Portomaggiore (original title: I piccoli ‘Fabre’ di Portomaggiore –​L’Esperimento didattico di Rina Nigrisoli dal 1919 al 1925 –​first supplement to the magazine ‘L’Educazione Nazionale’ 1926).

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publishing events of some of the two authors’ well-​known works. In fact, some of the letters give a ‘behind the scenes’ view of the publication of articles and books, referring to the final drafting and fine-​tuning, corrections, revisions and proofreading. To fully grasp all the ferment in the background of the cultural and editorial collaboration between Lombardo Radice and Ferrière, we must consider the letters from the spring/​autumn of 1926, the period in which Ferrière organised his trip to Italy to visit the ‘pioneers of the active school’ (Ferrière 1926). As he points out in the unpublished pages of his diary, the Petit journal (Ferrière 1926), the Genevan pedagogist would make a tour in April and October of the main Italian schools where educational differentiation experiments were being carried out (Lombardo Radice 1927a) and on the same occasion he would meet Lombardo Radice, who would provide ‘the list of schools that can be called new’ and deserved to be visited and surveyed internationally. There is one surprising aspect:  the Sicilian scholar delivered this list very confidentially, in person, during a private conversation with Ferrière. Subsequently, when urged by Pierre Bovet to draw up an updated institutional list of the aforementioned new schools on behalf of the Bureau International d’Education (BIE) (Ferrière 1925) to be published in an official information channel, the Guide du voyageur s’intéressant aux écoles (BIE 1927), the Sicilian pedagogist categorically refused to provide a formal list. Why was he unwilling to cooperate? The answer is to be found in an unpublished letter sent by Lombardo Radice to Pierre Bovet on 14 February 1927 (AIJJR), in which the Catanese scholar declares that political prudence prevents him from assuming the responsibility of providing indications for an official publication. The strict filters operating in Italy in this particular cultural-​historical period are already evident. In the context of the Italian-​Swiss scientific friendship, 1926 is also a significant year because an important publishing project was launched to publish a small book, edited by Ferrière and under the scientific supervision of Lombardo Radice, with the paradigmatic title L’Aube de l’école sereine en Italie, with the intention of ‘making known the Italian effort for the new school’. As the subtitle Monographies d’Education Nouvelle testifies, it is a work entirely dedicated to the New Education movement in Italy published as a monographic issue of the journal Pour l’ère nouvelle. The publication was entirely financed with funds from the ANIMI (National Association for the Interests of the Italian Mezzogiorno). Importantly, ANIMI became a patron and financier not only of the journal L’educazione nazionale (1919–​1933), but also of some of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s other important editorial projects (Cantatore 2008; Serpe 2014; Strongoli 2015).

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The intense exchange of correspondence, at regular intervals, is a testament to the laborious activity that led to the publication of this important monograph, which had never before been published in Italian translation. Lombardo Radice, expert and meticulous, recommends the most scrupulous corrections, and points out authors and in-​depth studies, imprinting his own personality and editorial vision on the project; he discusses, suggests, rectifies, advises, and scrutinises the choices of content. The choice of the title for this publication is truly significant. Lombardo Radice opts for the expression ‘scuola serena’ rather than ‘école active’ (suggested by Ferrière), to emphasise the specific characterisation of the Italian experience of the New Education movement. The additions suggested by the Sicilian scholar are equally interesting, as in the case of the inclusion, in the appendix to the aforementioned volume, of a meaningful bibliographical review by Elda Mazzoni entitled Les Écoles nouvelles et leur rôle dans la culture italienne (1927), a document of appreciable historical-​educational importance as it reviews the works and articles published after 1922 on the active school in Italy. This bibliographical review was considered so important by the Catanese scholar that he expected to pay an additional sum of money for it to be printed, even at personal expense (‘It is not good to sacrifice Mazzoni’s bibliography because it is very useful. The disadvantage will be to spend a little more; and we will certainly find the money’, he states in his letter of 25 October 1926). It is precisely from an analysis of this work, printed in 1927, that an in-​depth study can be started on some of the educational experiences of the active school promoted in Italy. In this regard, the work recalls figures of Italian educators, teachers, and pedagogues who were promoters of pioneering experiences based on the principles of New Education. Maurilio Salvoni, David Levi Morenos, Virginia Povegliano Lorenzetto, Lucia Latter, Cristoforo Negri, Ida and Rina Nigrisoli, Michele Crimi, and Alice and Leopoldo Franchetti are some of the protagonists mentioned, all of whom were ‘militant’ animators of avant-​garde educational practices and Italian pedagogical renewal at the beginning of the 20th century. The Italian context welcomed the cultural solicitations and the push for pedagogical innovation coming from the various European countries. However, unlike in other European countries, the direction of education renewal in Italy did not take on the characteristics of an organised and institutionalised movement following a programmatic line; rather, it spread, in a more or less latent form, through often isolated private experiences, driven by the social reform needs involving schools, especially elementary schools. The educational and pedagogical practices of the early 20th century therefore constitute a singular example of a process of transformation and scholastic

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reform that developed in the context of small local schools, combined with a social programme for the protection of children’s rights, for the cultural, civil, and moral elevation of the younger generations. While welcoming the cultural influences that derived from the European scenario, Italian educational experiences maintained a form linked to specific cultural, social, and geographical contexts. The fight against illiteracy and educational poverty, the rate of school dropouts in Southern Italy and the need for hygienic and public health measures all constituted urgent pedagogical needs. The New Education ‘silently’ made its way into a number of private Italian institutions, sometimes with humble means at its disposal, sometimes without gaining any applause or recognition from the academic circles of the time. Many teachers and educators applied it quietly ‘under their breath’: a true ‘corporation des silencieux’ [‘corporation of silent teachers’, Mazzoni 1927].

A ‘corporation of silent teachers’ for Active Schools The bulk of the correspondence between Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and Adolphe Ferrière can be contextualised within a scientific-​erudite framework. A dominant motif to be found in the letters is the bibliographical one: the letters contain interesting issues that follow the general lines of a theme or debate of a pedagogical, philosophical, or cultural nature and are in response to requests for reports on collections, publishing series of the time, reviews, the distribution of books, and the exchange of texts and various teaching materials. This perspective is particularly interesting for reading the cultural-​pedagogical climate of the main themes and problems that animated the debate on school and education in the early 20th century. The contents concern communications on daily research and teaching activities, critical judgements, reading impressions and suggestions, bibliographical references, and advice of a scientific nature. They also anticipate theoretical motifs, that would be developed with much greater argumentative force in later years. Theoretical divergences on areas of investigation or aspects of pedagogical thinking (such as the different views on psychoanalysis) also emerge at times. If Ferrière is much closer to the ideas of Henri-​Louis Bergson in the biological conception of the subject understood as a ‘living organism’, for which education is configured in terms of strengthening the primary vital energy (élan vital) and reinforcing the desire for life (Ferrière 1915), Lombardo Radice translated the ideas of educational reformism into romantic and idealistic terms (Chiosso 2019) and distanced himself from a ‘positivistic method’ in schooling that could stifle the spontaneity and interest of the child (Lombardo Radice 1926d).

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The school conceived as a laboratory of practical activity, the value given to childhood freedom and spontaneity, the importance accorded to the natural method of learning, the co-​education of the sexes, the conception of an integral education/​learning, the recognition of the formative importance of the natural environment and nature, and education through work are just some of the main themes that would be disseminated in the important journals directed by the two scholars. In particular, an important role is given to the periodical L’educazione nazionale, a significant instrument of pedagogical propaganda during the reform years (Colaci 2000), founded in 1919 by Lombardo Radice and directed by him until March 1933 (the year of its forced suppression by Fascism). In April 1926, immediately after Ferrière’s trip to Italy, the journal changed its editorial approach and, thanks to the intervention of the Geneva scholar, began to resonate internationally. What are the steps in this decisive editorial turning point? One aspect to be noted is that until 1926 there was no organisation in Italy officially entrusted with the task of disseminating the ideas of educational renewal and spreading the ideas and methods of New Education. For just a few years after this date (until 1933), L’Educazione nazionale would take on this role on Ferrière’s initiative and invitation. In the other principal European countries, on the other hand, various institutional bodies were tasked with disseminating the ideas of New Education (Gutierrez 2009). Among the main instruments of the Ligue Internationale pour l’Éducation Nouvelle are the following: Pour l’Ére nouvelle founded in 1921 and directed by Adolphe Ferrière; Nouvelle Education founded in 1922 by Roger Cousinet and Madeleine T.J. Guéritte; and finally, the Revista de Pedagogía –​órgano en España de la Liga Internacional de Educación Nueva [Spanish Channel for the International New Education League] founded in Madrid in 1922 by Lorenzo Luzuriaga (Volpicelli 2017a, 2017b). One fact on which it may be useful to dwell concerns the change of name of the Italian journal to include a significant subtitle: ‘Organo di studio dell’Educazione Nuova’ [Channel for the Study of New Education]. From April 1926, L’educazione nazionale became ‘Organo di studio dell’educazione nuova nelle scuole comuni e nella famiglia’ [Channel for the Study of New Education in Communal Schools and the Family], a title later simplified. The periodical thus took on a new international thematic approach thanks to the proposal by Ferrière and the Committee of the Education nouvelle movement to become a ‘Foreign journal specialising in the study of the New Schools’, or as Lombardo Radice would write ‘Bulletin of information on the Italian and foreign pedagogical movement for active schools’. The periodical thus became a forum for providing updates, comparing experiences, and sharing educational

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practices, welcoming a series of contributions dedicated specifically to the Italian and foreign pedagogical movement of New Education. Reviewing the various issues of the periodical and in particular the front and back covers, one can see the corrections, additions and changes; these editorial transitions can all be clarified through the exchange of letters sent between 1926 and 1927. In this regard, by way of example, we can recall that from 1926, at Ferrière’s urging, the new issues of the journal were accompanied by a series of thematic in-​depth studies, the so-​called Supplementi, monographic studies dedicated to the main protagonists of active schools in Italy. At the end of his aforementioned Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale, Lombardo Radice invited readers, in this case teachers and educators, to send him teaching materials that demonstrated a heritage of ‘good practices’ in active education:  ‘Whoever studies these didactics as a student teacher or as a free reader should know that he or she will begin a new, devoted relationship. Write to us, tell us your experiences, your disappointments, and your victories. We will take them into account’ (1913, pp. 497–​498). The first supplement, entitled I piccoli Fabre di Portomaggiore [The Little Fabre of Portomaggiore] (Lombardo Radice 1926c), was dedicated to the experiment conducted by Ida and Rina Nigrisoli in the province of Ferrara [in Emilia Romagna region, Italy], described by Lombardo Radice in a letter of 25 April 1926 as ‘the most remarkable (admirable) experiment. For me it is among the most significant in Europe. The pupils are real researchers, budding naturalists, real “little Fabres”.’ This was followed by Maurilio Salvoni’s Un Ventennio di ‘Scuola Attiva’ [Twenty Years of ‘Active School’], the publication of which was described by Lombardo Radice as an important milestone (15 April 1927). Indeed, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice would always keep his eye on the Milanese educator Maurilio Salvoni. The name of Maurilio Salvoni is mentioned by Pierre Bovet in the journal of the J.J. Rousseau L’intemédiaire des Educateurs in the section Livres nouveaux where for the first time the fortunate expression école active was adopted. In 1917, a review of Salvoni’s pamphlet, entitled Una macchia sul muro e altre lezioni [A Spot on the Wall and Other Lessons], appears in the same journal. The Milanese educator is presented as the one who applies the great principles of the école active in Italy. Lombardo Radice, recognising in Salvoni ‘the forerunner of the new didactics in Italy’, and ‘one of the best writers on educational matters that Italy has’ (1926, p. 51), tried to give him recognition and resonance by delivering his writings to the press through the collection entitled Un ventennio di ‘scuola attiva’ [Twenty Years of Active School, Salvoni 1927], so that the methods of the ‘Scuola di educazione dell’attività spontanea’ [SEAS, School of Education for Spontaneous Activity] founded by him at Gazzada in the province of Varese could be appreciated and known.

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With the same educational goal of highlighting little-​ known figures, Il maestro esploratore [The Explorer Teacher 1928a], which was dedicated to the Swiss educator Cristoforo Negri, I Campi scolastici [The School Camps 1932] by Michele Crimi, and Lombardo Radice’s own interesting contributions in the Scuola rurale [Rural School] and Dal mio archivio didattico [From my Didactic Archive 1928b] were later published. Reviewing and carefully reading the sixteen issues of the journal, it is possible to discover decisive elements in this lively season of Italian pedagogical reform. In its final years, the journal was affected by the climate of suppression and restriction imposed by the fascist regime. Significant aspects of the political conflict experienced by Lombardo Radice can be discerned, and signs of the transition from enthusiasm for the Gentile Reform to a distancing from the fascist aspects of how this reform was applied to schools become evident (Ostenc 1981). It can be seen that the journal began to have less room for manoeuvre and, progressively, it would be forced to come to terms with the decreasing number of subscribers. In the 1930s, Lombardo Radice would have to choose between two alternatives: to discontinue publication or increase the subscription price. Fascism was to play its part by drastically suppressing the magazine’s publication in 1933 in a climate of ‘fervent resignation’. The totalitarian imposition of Fascism on Italian political and cultural life and the ideological conditioning of educational spaces were to force the withdrawal of the overhaul of the school inspired by the New Education, to which significant investment had been dedicated (Cives 1993). After almost a decade of correspondence between Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and Adolphe Ferrière, silence ensued. Silence not only in terms of correspondence but, unfortunately, silence relating to active schools. The serene image of childhood, echoed by Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, thus suffered a drastic setback even though it would remain united and strong for many years to come, in the context of a cultural orientation that recognised the markedly transformative vocation of the school in terms of democratisation and civilisation. The insights offered by Lombardo Radice and Adolphe Ferrière still offer significant invitations to contemporary pedagogical research. At their centre, then as now, lies education’s promise of the emancipation and recognition of the democratic and civilising function of educational institutions, especially schools, in promoting change and human transformation.

References BIE (1927): Guide du voyageur s’intéressant aux écoles Genève. Genève.

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Cantatore, L. (2008): Associazione nazionale per gli interessi morali ed economici del Mezzogiorno d’Italia, poi Associazione nazionale per gli interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia (A.N.I.M.I). In: Chiosso, G. (ed.): TESEO ‘900. Editori scolastico-​educativi del primo Novecento. Milano, pp. 38–​42. Chiosso, G. (2019): L’educazione degli italiani. Laicità, progresso e nazione nel primo Novecento. Bologna. Cives, G. (1983):  Attivismo e antifascismo in Giuseppe Lombardo-​ Radice. Firenze. D’Aprile, G. (2010a): Portraits dell’Educazione Nuova: il ‘caso’ Adolphe Ferrière. In: I Problemi della Pedagogia 56(1–​3), pp. 121–​137. D’Aprile, G. (2010b):  Adolphe Ferrière e les oubliés della scuola attiva in Italia. Pisa. D’Aprile, G. (2019): Memorie di una inedita corrispondenza. Lettere di Giuseppe Lombardo Radice ad Adolphe Ferrière. Pisa. Ferrière, A. (1915): La loi du progrès en biologie et en sociologie et la question de l’organisme social. Paris. Ferrière, A. (1925): Liste des Ecoles nouvelles. In: Pour l’Ere nouvelle 15, pp. 9–​23. Ferrière, A. (1926b): Petit journal, 1926 (jeudi, 7 octobre). AIJJR, fonds Adolphe Ferrière. Ferrière, A. (1927):  Congrès de Locarno:  du 3 au 15 août 1927:  conclusion. In: Pour l’ère nouvelle 6(31), sept.-​oct., pp. 209–​210. Ferrière, A. (1922): L’école active. Neuchâtel et (Genève). Ferrière, A. (1926): Une Visite aux Pionniers de l’École Active en Italie. In: Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 23(5), pp. 150–​156. Gutierrez, L. (2009): La Ligue Internationale pour l’Éducation Nouvelle. Contribution à l’histoire d’un mouvement international de réforme de l’enseignement (1921–​1939). In:  Spirale  –​Revue de Recherches en Education (5), pp.  29–​42. Hameline, D. (2000):  Courants et contre-​ courants  dans la pédagogie contemporaine. Paris. Lombardo Radice, G. (1927a): La scuola attiva nella riforma Gentile e le classi di differenziazione didattica. In: L’Educazione nazionale 9(1), pp. 20–​32. Lombardo Radice, G. (1913): Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale. Palermo. Lombardo Radice, G. (1926a): L’École Active dans la réforme du Ministre Gentile et dans les classes expérimentales dites de différenciation didactique. In: Pour l’Ère Nouvelle 5(23), pp. 176–​184.

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Lombardo Radice, G. (1926b):  Spogli e Spunti. In:  L’Educazione nazionale (8), p. 51. Lombardo Radice, G. (1926c): I piccoli Fabre di Portomaggiore. Roma. Lombardo Radice, G. (1926d):  La nuova edizione del «Metodo della pedagogia scientifica» di Maria Montessori. In:  L’Educazione nazionale 8(luglio), pp.  33–​50. Lombardo Radice, G. (1927): Lettera inedita a Pierre Bovet. 14 febbraio 1927. Fonds Adolphe Ferrière (AIJJR). Lombardo Radice, G. (1928a): Dal mio archivio didattico. –​IV. Circolari didattiche per l’educazione degli adulti. Quarto supplemento a L’Educazione nazionale. Roma. Lombardo Radice, G. (1928b): Il Maestro esploratore: pagine di Cristoforo Negri e di altri maestri ticinesi. Roma. Lucisano, P./​Marzano, A. (eds) (2022): Quale scuola per i cittadini del mondo? A cento anni dalla fondazione della Ligue Internationale de l’Éducation Nouvelle, Convegno Internazionale SIRD Roma 25‐26 novembre 2021. Lecce‐Brescia. Lussi, C./​Muller, V./​Kiciman, V. (2002): Pédagogie et psychologie: les frontières mouvantes du développement des sciences de l’éducation à Genève. 1912–​ 1948. In: Hoffstetter, R./​Schneuwly, B. (eds): Science de l’éducation, 19e–​20e siècles:  entre champs professionnels et champs disciplinaires. Berna, pp. 383–​421. Mazzoni, E. (1927): Les Écoles nouvelles et leur rôle dans la culture italienne. In: Ferrière, A. (ed.): L’aube de l’Ecole sereine en Italie. Monographies d’Education nouvelle. Paris, pp. 183–​184. Ostenc, M. (1981): La scuola italiana durante il fascismo. Roma-​Bari. Salvoni, M. (1927): Un Ventennio di ‘Scuola Attiva’ (2 voll.: I –​Prime attuazioni e note. II. –​L’indirizzo genetico storico). Roma. Salvoni, M. (2017): Una macchia sul muro e altre lezioni. Milano. Serpe, B. (2014): La Calabria e l’opera dell’Animi. Cosenza. Strongoli, R.C. (2015):  Il progetto di formazione diffusa dell’ANIMI. Modelli educativi e prassi didattiche. Acireale-​Roma. Sweetser, A. (1927): La signification et la portée du Congrès d’Education. In: Pour l’Ère nouvelle (31), September-​October, pp. 165–​167. Todaro, L. (2019): Between New Education and Idealistic vision: Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and the Arduous Path of L’Educazione nazionale in Italy (1927–​ 1933). In: Swiss Journal of Educational Research 2(41), pp. 354–​368.

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Evelina Scaglia

Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and the teachers’ network in Tessin: Tracing an ‘educational-​cultural transfer’ through the pages of L’educatore della Svizzera italiana Abstract

From the early 1920s, the border between Italy and Tessin provided fertile ground for pedagogical, didactic, and cultural exchange between the Italian scholar Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and the lively local teachers’ network, which helped enrich his pedagogical perspective even after his break with Giovanni Gentile and the ‘adjustments’ to the 1923 reform of the Italian school system. A critical reading of some articles from the periodical L’educatore della Svizzera italiana [The educator of Italian-​speaking Switzerland] allows us to identify two main areas of comparison: the extent to which the local experiences of the scuola serena, in which Lombardo Radice’s conception of school found concrete expression, were valued to appreciate and promote them; and the spread of the Pasquali-​Agazzi Method as the pedagogical perspective most suited to consolidating pre-​school education in Tessin, to the detriment of the Montessori Method. His ongoing relationship with the world of Tessin, fostered by his friendship with Ernesto Pelloni, provided Lombardo Radice with the opportunity to continue his work across the border, while the Italian school system underwent a process of fascist development. Keywords: childhood education, New Schools Movement, teachers’ network, Tessin school system, 20th century

The first steps in Tessin A few years after making his contribution to the renewal of the Italian school system with the drafting of the elementary school programmes in 1923, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice wished to emphasise the international scope of the pedago-​ gical perspective that inspired them and through which they had been realised, thanks to the collaboration he had established with those such as teachers, headmasters and inspectors, who concretely ‘made’ the school, day after day (Lombardo Radice 1928; Hessen 1954, pp. 7–​9). He had met some of these personalities during his first trip to Tessin, which took place in December 1923 at the invitation of Francesco Chiesa, a correspondent of his friend Giuseppe Prezzolini,

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who was rector of the Lugano grammar school, director of the cantonal library and head of the Scuola ticinese di cultura italiana [Tessin School of Italian Culture] at which Lombardo Radice spoke (Pelloni 1924, p. 2; Agliati 1991). The name of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice had long been known in Tessin teaching circles, thanks to the journal L’educatore della Svizzera italiana, the mouthpiece of the Società Demopedeutica [Society of the Friends of Popular Education], founded in 1837 by Stefano Franscini, a member of the Tessin ra-​ dical liberal party and one of the main proponents of the school system in Italian-​ speaking Switzerland (Ceschi 2005, pp. 45–​122). Since the end of the 1910s, in line with the periodical’s programmatic intentions to promote in-​service teacher training that was inspired by the ‘principles of a pedagogy underpinned by experience’, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s work had begun to enjoy a certain re-​ sonance, thanks to the support of Ernesto Pelloni, headmaster of the elementary and senior schools in Lugano and from 1916 also editor of L’educatore della Svizzera italiana. With Pelloni, the journal became a mirror that could reflect how the Italian pedagogical, scholastic, and cultural debate was received locally, with a view to encouraging the development of a solid ‘pedagogical conscience’ among its readers, who were called upon to take part in a process of the school’s inner renewal (Rossi 1970). Having already been a student of the Scuola pedagogica [Pedagogical School for elementary school teachers] of Roma at the time of Luigi Credaro and Bernardino Varisco, Pelloni was a faithful correspondent of Lombardo Radice, and had an interest in ensuring that the volumes of his pedagogical series Scuola e vita published by Battiato (Catania), the newly founded journal L’educazione nazionale and his research on the scuole serene were well circulated among the members of the Società Demopedeutica. To this end, the pages of Demopedeutica’s periodical soon formed the backdrop to a kind of ‘pedagogical-​cultural transfer’ (Sahlfeld 2018), that is, a process of critically assuming foreign (in this case Italian) pedagogical and didactic models, to consolidate Tessin’s pedagogy on the epistemological level and renew it methodologically. The figure of Lombardo Radice was, therefore, one of the distinctive elements of a publishing line that was characterised by a greater openness towards the Italian pedagogical debate, which operated in both directions, aiming not only to ‘import’ the latest innovations into the Canton, but also to ‘export’ across the border the experiences of the new Tessin schools, which were realised by unknown teachers in often remote mountain locations. To understand the full extent of this cultural operation, it is necessary to think of the long-​standing influence exerted in Tessin by Herbartism and Positivist philosophy, which had directly inspired the 1903 scuola normale programmes

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and, as such, were capable of supplanting Pestalozzi’s intuitive method, which had been officially introduced in the 1894 elementary school programmes, although they had already been operating in the Canton since 1880 (Rossi 1959, pp. 225–​263). The first instances of the encounter between Giuseppe Prezzolini’s Vocianesimo and the Italian Neo-​idealism of Giovanni Gentile and Giuseppe Lombardo Radice proved decisive (Agliati 1991, pp. 73–​76). Here too, the pages of L’Educatore della Svizzera italiana reflected a gradual progression, that started towards the end of the First World War, from constant reference to Luigi Credaro’s Italian Neo-​herbartism, to the Unione Magistrale Nazionale [UMN, National Union of Elementary School Teachers] and to the Unione Italiana dell’Educazione Popolare [Italian Union of Popular Education] linked to the Società Umanitaria in Milan, to a progressive openness towards Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s thought, but without identifying with it totally, preferring instead to give attention to a variety of contributions. These included the Neo-​kantism and Neo-​herbartism of the Italian scholar Giovanni Vidari, the realist Spiritualism of another Italian, Giovanni Calò, the active education promoted by the Institut ‘Jean Jacques Rousseau’ in Geneva and the innovations published by the Lausanne journal L’éducateur. If this was the scenario in which the process of the ‘pedagogical-​cultural transfer’ of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s pedagogy between Italy and Tessin came into being, it is necessary, however, to emphasise how it was articulated along two main lines: the first linked to the pedagogical legitimising of a new figure of the teacher, who was engaged in the school renewal experiences known as scuole serene; the second relating to the progressive spread of the Pasquali-​ Agazzi Method in Tessin, which soon came to supplant the Montessori Method that had been propagated by Teresa Bontempi in numerous kindergartens. All this was possible because his encounter with the cultural and teaching world in Tessin allowed Lombardo Radice to continue his school reform, despite his sudden break with the fascist government and his friend Minister Giovanni Gentile in June 1924, thanks to the innovations that various local teachers had been pursuing in their establishments for some time. Concurrently, these teachers participated in a critical reception of his pedagogical-​didactic perspective, with the aim of consolidating their own local pedagogy on a scientific level and reinforcing their didactic action in terms of reflexivity, in a period of change in the Tessin school system that began with the primary cycle (Marcacci 2015, pp. 95–​104). The Catanese scholar was thus able to contribute a conceptual clarification to schoolteachers, who had a keen need for greater theoretical and methodological awareness of educational problems, to corroborate their ‘often intuitively

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ingenious’ didactic practices on a pedagogical level (Caratti 1980, p. 256). In this manner, Lombardo Radice could counterpose the so-​called metodo italiano [Italian Method] with foreign pedagogical approaches, and, as stated in a note defending his practices written in 1927 in response to the restrictive measures taken against him by the Fascist police, ‘support the Tessin nationalist movement in the vital field of education’ (Meda 2021, pp. 81–​82).

Positively evaluating the scuole serene: Between critica didattica and new pedagogical paradigms The attention given by L’educatore della Svizzera italiana to Lombardo Radice’s work in promoting the experiences of the scuole serene arose, firstly, through a series of pedagogical and didactic references being shared with the Italian journal L’educazione nazionale, founded by Lombardo Radice himself. In the name of the common goal of elevating teachers’ culture, the importance of improving national education –​or rather in the case of Tessin, cantonal education –​was emphasised by addressing the school and the epistemological renewal of peda-​ gogy, which was viewed as knowledge which could facilitate dealing with everyday school problems, and never belittled as mere empirical data. Other issues were also included: a strong emphasis on the popular character of the elementary school as a ‘factual school’ and a ‘school of action’, capable of promoting the edu-​ cation of every child who was recognised as possessing an ‘artistic’ culture; the vision of the teacher as an ‘artist’; the continuity and gradual implementation of the various school orders in the name of a happy union between the psychologi-​ cal dimension and disciplines, on which an organic reform of the entire school system could be based; the direct involvement of teachers in conducting research ‘in’ and ‘on’ the school, starting from the pedagogical evaluation of their experience and recognising them as the primary agents in a process of self-​reform, in line with the militant programme of the elementary teachers’ action groups for the renewal of schools, born in Italy in the first post-​war period; and a conception of ‘living’ didactics, that could overcome the limitations of Herbartian and late-​positivist didactics, giving value to the enthusiasm and spontaneity in the teacher-​pupil relationship (Cives 1968). These references, together with the issues discussed by Adolphe Ferrière at an international level in the journal Pour l’ère nouvelle, the official channel of the Ligue internationale pour l’éducation nouvelle, contributed to fuelling a pedagogical debate among Tessin teachers that aimed to overcome the ‘pernicious divorce’ between theory and scholastic experience and to realise a process of educational and methodological-​didactic renewal of teachers’ activities.

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The dialogue with Lombardo Radice, which intensified from 1924 onwards, gave among its first reflections in L’educatore della Svizzera italiana greater attention to the capacity of Tessin’s scuole serene to ‘acclimatise’, through a close connection between school teaching and local life, in its various forms. Among the exemplifications of this proposed by Ernesto Pelloni was a new conception of the teaching of natural history, understood on an epistemological level as ‘science and poetry’, and trialled in Lugano’s elementary schools by the young teacher Cristoforo Negri and in the senior schools by Mario Jermini. Their experiences contributed to defining a new unitary pedagogical and methodological-​didactic paradigm, similar to the one outlined by Lombardo Radice in the new programmes for Italian elementary schools, that was capable of leading pupils towards a religious sense of life and to being protagonists in educational processes that held the capacity to involve the formation of everyone’s inner personality (Lombardo Radice 1928; Scaglia 2020). As part of this encounter, Giuseppe Lombardo Radice wanted to publish some of his contributions in L’educatore della Svizzera italiana to seal the international pedagogical interest aroused by the Gentile reform. He began with the report Il dialetto nella scuola [The Vernacular in School] (Lombardo Radice 1924), which he had produced while still in his capacity as director of the Commissione centrale per l’esame dei libri di testo [Central Commission for the Exa-​ mination of Textbooks], and then submitted to the Tessin readers two essays of critica didattica on Tessin schools written on his return from his first trip to Tessin as professor of Pedagogy at the Regio Istituto Superiore di Magistero in Roma, entitled, respectively, La scuola di Pila come specchio d’un mondo [The Pila School as Mirror of a World] and Le duecento osservatrici di ‘Mario’ nelle scuole elementari di Lugano. Saggio di estetica dell’arte puerile [The Two Hundred Observers of ‘Mario’ in Lugano Elementary Schools. Essay on the Aesthetic of Infant Art] (Lombardo Radice 1925a, 1925b). These were published together in the successful volume Athena fanciulla. Scienza e poesia della scuola serena (1925), along with the report on the school at Muzzano by Maria Boschetti Alberti, already published in Tessin by L’Adula and in Italy by L’educazione nazionale. Lombardo Radice recognised the Swiss experiences of Pila, Lugano and Muzzano, and the Italian experiences of the Montesca school in Città di Castello (Perugia, Central Italy) and the Rinnovata school in Milano, as emblematic of the ‘new Italian education’ envisaged by the elementary school programmes that had just been issued, because they were able to put each child at the centre of their educational work, recognising his or her nature as an ‘artist’ and ‘scientist’ (Lombardo Radice 1925c, p. 413). This was possible thanks to the ispezioni a distanza [remote inspections], conducted in the form of an analysis of the notebooks,

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diaries, written works and drawings produced by the pupils of those schools, which he kept in his archivio didattico, in order to study the teaching-​learning processes through the experience reflected in the ‘children’s writings’, which were made available to him by an inspector in the case of Pila and by Pelloni himself for Lugano. These were first-​hand accounts, systematic rather than rhapsodic, of schoolwork undertaken, conceived as methodologically exemplary moments of pedagogical reflection and which contributed to making up for the increasing difficulty Lombardo Radice experienced in having a direct relationship with schools, due to the tightening political control on his movements within Italy and, even more so, abroad (Cives 1983, pp. 30–​31; Meda 2021). Moreover, they enabled him to bring children’s writings out of the state of ‘minority’ to which they had traditionally been relegated, being neglected, denied, or even made to disappear. In this way, he showed that he was ahead of his time and of the hi-​ storiographical turning point of the study of the ‘material culture of the school’, which has only in recent decades begun to recognise the historical and peda-​ gogical value of these products, particularly the notebooks as witnesses of  ‘an indi-​ spensable educational experience’ and ‘emblem of the everyday material nature of schooling that becomes the object of research’ (Cantatore 2010; Meda 2016, pp. 19–​38). The study of these writings allowed Lombardo Radice to carry out an in-​depth study of the active nature of childhood, but also to test ‘new’ didactics, based on the centrality of the educational relationship in its multiple dimensions, including those of enhancing personal aesthetic taste through the study of all school disciplines, both humanistic-​literary and mathematical-​scientific (Sganzini 1925). One can, therefore, identify in the two critiche didattiche, and anticipated by L’educatore della Svizzera italiana, the culmination of the process through which, in the mid-​1920s, Lombardo Radice came to overcome the concept of the school as a ‘product of national culture’, which was at the centre of the proposal of Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale (1913), in favour of a concept of a ‘serene’ school as a ‘laboratory’, an ‘artisan’s workshop’, or ‘factory’, that was ready to consider the pupil in his or her sacredness and to recognise them as engaged in the free formation of their personality, as illustrated in Athena fan-​ ciulla: scienza e poesia della scuola serena (Mazzetti 1958, pp. 231–​239).

The dissemination of the Pasquali-​Agazzi method The second area in which the ‘pedagogical-​cultural transfer’ between Italy and Tessin was realised, as witnessed by an analysis of the pages of L’educatore della Svizzera italiana, concerned a topic that had been at the centre of the Tessin

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school debate for several decades: the pedagogical qualification of structures for children’s pre-​school education. Stefano Franscini, in 1828, had already emphasised the urgency of taking measures to educate the youngest children, to combat poverty and illiteracy (Franscini 1985, pp. 101–​112). However, it was not until 19 December 1844 that the first kindergarten in Tessin was established for 74 poor children in Lugano, on the initiative of Giacomo Ciani, inspired by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s thinking and Robert Owen’s Infant School. A first step towards a systematic focus on pre-​school education came in 1898, with the introduction of the role of cantonal inspector of kindergartens, entrusted to Lauretta Perucchi Rensi, who had many years of experience in the best kindergartens of the Swiss confederation, where she had been able to study Friedrich Fröbel’s peda-​ gogy in depth (Rossi 1959, pp. 124–​126, 297). In 1907, Perucchi Rensi was replaced by Teresa Bontempi, who had created an international Montessori network, through her collaboration with the Società Umanitaria in Milan led by the socialist Augusto Osimo –​who had been responsible for opening the first Casa dei Bambini in the Lombard city –​and with the pedagogical research centre of the University of Geneva, which saw the introduction of the Montessori method in the Maison des Petits. Despite the cooling of relations between Bontempi and Montessori, from the mid-​1920s onwards, the Canton of Tessin was the scene of an experiment that involved annexing the first elementary class to the Case dei Bambini, in the name of the principle of pedagogical and didactic continuity between the two school orders (Sahlfeld/​Vanini 2018, pp. 167–​170). In that same period, however, the first signs of a turning point began to appear that would prove to be a true ‘passage to the North-​West’, with the recognition and full acceptance of the Pasquali-​Agazzi Method, which had been operating in Italy for some time and was seen in va-​ rious circles, including Lombardo Radice’s neo-​idealist one, as a valid alternative to the Montessori Method. The journal L’educatore della Svizzera italiana hosted the publication of the reservations already expressed by Giuseppe Lombardo Radice in the pages of L’educazione nazionale towards the third edition of Maria Montessori’s volume, Il Metodo della Pedagogia Scientifica applicato all’educazione infantile nelle Case dei Bambini (Lombardo Radice 1926a). This editorial choice was in line with the conversation that had been initiated by the teachers’ network gathered around L’educatore della Svizzera italiana with the Italian pedagogist Andrea Franzoni and the Associazione Educatrice Italiana [AEI, Italian Educator Association], founded in 1925 by Brother Alessandro Alessandrini to promote better pedagogical training for nursery school educators using the Pasquali-​Agazzi Method.

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Pelloni and his collaborators began to highlight, like Giuseppe Lombardo Radice (1926b), the advantages of the Pasquali-​Agazzi Method on several fronts, such as: the centrality of the educational relationship between the educator and the children and between peers; spontaneous learning through ‘doing it yourself ’; the proposal of an educational environment that was domestic in nature; the use of ‘poor’ didactic materials, such as the so-​called cianfrusaglie [junk] found in the little ones’ pockets; the practice of the arte delle piccole mani [art of little hands] as a form of manual labour; the daily performance of attività di vita pratica [practical life activities] with educational and hygienic purposes; the valuing of the multiple forms of children’s expressiveness; and the learning of the Italian language through esercizi di ‘lingua parlata’ [‘spoken language’ exercises] (without author 1927). In the face of the innovations introduced in 1928 by the Programma delle Case dei Bambini compilato dalle signorine Maria Valli, Direttrice dell’Asilo d’infanzia modello di Bellinzona, e Teresina Bontempi, Ispettrice cantonale degli Asili d’infanzia [Children’s Home Programme compiled by Miss Maria Valli, Director of the Bellinzona Model Kindergarten, and Teresina Bontempi, cantonal inspector of Kindergartens], better known as the Programma Valli-​Bontempi, Agazzi’s pedagogy represented for L’educatore della Svizzera italiana a valid response to the objective of transforming the Case dei Bambini into institutions of physical, moral and social education, that could offer ‘educational care’ from the age of 3 up to admission to elementary school and guarantee the desired pedagogical and didactic-​educational continuity with the first grade. Evidence of this is also provided by the periodical launching a column entitled Per gli asili e per le prime classi elementari [For kindergartens and the first elementary classes], which reaffirmed the importance of pursuing continuity between the Case dei Bambini and the first elementary classes, starting from a systematic and competent practice of manual work, artistic work, gardening, and practical life activities (tidying up the classroom, washing, cleaning, etc.) typical of the Pasquali-​Agazzi Method, which should be promoted as elective moments to foster the child’s expression of their inner world, cooperation and mutual help between peers, especially in the most deprived contexts. There was, therefore, a clear choice in favour of the Pasquali-​Agazzi Method over the Montessori one, excluding also a third option represented by Giuseppina Pizzigoni’s Method, which had been applied since 1914 in the nursery school annexed to the Rinnovata school in the Ghisolfa quarter of Milan, based on an accurate analysis of its strengths while also taking into account the evolution of the contemporary Italian educational debate (G. 1932, p. 26).

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In the meantime, Tessin had a deep socio-​economic crisis to deal with (Saltini 2006, pp. 357–​369), which affected the scholastic debate through the request to put in place summer specialisation courses for nursery teachers, which would also be open to those already qualified to teach in elementary schools, to provide a concrete solution to the problem of teacher unemployment and to promote the Pasquali-​Agazzi method in relation to local training needs. The issue in 1932 of the Programma per le attività manuali nelle Scuole Elementari e Maggiori ad opera del Collegio degli Ispettori Scolastici [Programme for Manual Activities in Elementary and Senior Schools by the Council of School Inspectors], focused on the importance of maintaining ‘a little of the character of nurseries’ in the first two classes of elementary schools, favouring an increase in the pedagogical culture of the teachers, who were also invited to qualify as nursery teachers, and valuing the ‘instinct for constructiveness’ and the need for the spiritual autonomy of each child, in the name of an authentically ‘modern’ and ‘educating’ school. Here too, the pages of L’educatore della Svizzera italiana offered the contribution made by Lombardo Radice’s work, in terms of making teachers responsible for effective and qualified teaching (the 1932 Programma was indicative, rather than prescriptive, in recognition of the autonomy of each teacher), va-​ luing manual work (to be considered equal to study, as an authentic realisation of the personality and expression of the soul of each one, and no longer a ‘thing for nursery and elementary schools’) and, finally, investment in their training, opening method schools for educators and future mothers of families. These had been prefigured by the Italian school reform of 1923 in the name of an idea of child education that promoted close collaboration between the family and the preparatory school (no author 1933). This appreciation for the Pasquali-​Agazzi method becomes even clearer if one refers to the local pedagogist Carlo Sganzini’s underlining of its Pestalozzian origins, which justify its characteristics of greater adaptability, self-​renewal and development, compared to that proposed by Maria Montessori. The interdependence between a bottom-​ up educational renewal and an increased focus on the cultural and professional training of the educators was also at the centre of the work initiated by Felicina Colombo, who replaced Teresa Bontempi in the role of cantonal inspector of the Case dei Bambini. In a study of 63 institutions, it emerged that, not having the Montessori development material foreseen in the Programma Valli-​Bontempi, ‘the teacher often occupied the children in work that was not in keeping with their age or temperament, such as studying poetry, reading, writing, calculating’ (no author 1932). We were still a long way from that process of overcoming ‘falsely Froebelian’ and ‘falsely Aportian’ realities, manifested for example in Italy decades ago with the advent of the

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Pasquali-​Agazzi pedagogical project (Catarsi/​Genovesi 1995, pp. 49–​91). In light of this finding, Pelloni proposed in L’educatore della Svizzera italiana to carry out a survey of Tessin’s 124 Case dei Bambini, to find out what qualifications the 147 educators working in their centres held and to ascertain how far the application of the Programma Valli-​Bontempi had reached in individual circumstances, to reiterate the importance of a solid professional training for educators.

Latest achievements The last stage of the process of ‘pedagogical-​cultural transfer’, in which Giuseppe Lombardo Radice played a major role, took place at the historical juncture when the Tessin was facing the start of an unprecedented convergence between conservatives and liberals, following the death in 1932 of Giuseppe Cattori, leader of the conservative party and director of the Department of Public Education (Saltini 2006, pp. 357–​369). Lombardo Radice was invited by the cantonal go-​ vernment to act as consultant to the Council of School Inspectors in their drafting of the new Programmi per le scuole elementari e maggiori del Canton Ticino [Programmes for the Elementary and Major Schools in the Canton of Tessin], later approved by the State Council on 22 September 1936. This was his third pedagogical trip to Italian-​speaking Switzerland, during which he gave a short series of lectures at the Scuola magistrale [elementary teacher training school] in Locarno and undertook a three-​week study visit to the main educational institutions in Tessin from Stabio to Airolo, from Mendrisio to Bosco in Valle Maggia, briefly visiting Agno, Pila d’Intragna, Carena in Val Morobbia and Corzoneso in Val di Blenio. Once again, L’educatore della Svizzera italiana contributed to valuing the traces of this path, publishing in the double issue of August-​September 1935 some early indications of his reports of critica didattica (Lombardo Radice 1935), later published in full, together with the official report, in a special appendix entitled Pedagogia d’avanguardia nel Canton Ticino [Avant-​guard Pedagogy in Tessin] within his last monograph, Pedagogia di apostoli e di operai (1936) (Lombardo Radice 1936, pp. 309–​386). This was the culmination of a process of mutual discussion, that was now more than a decade old. From his experience as an observer and explorer of the scuole serene came fundamental suggestions for a reform of the programmes and teaching-​learning practices in the Tessin Canton, under the banner of formalising the unprecedented vision of the new education in pedagogical terms and school policy, deepened through the study of the best experiences of local teachers.

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Lombardo Radice returned to those lands again in July 1938, giving an advanced course at the Scuola magistrale di Locarno on the ‘dominant motifs of modern didactics’, addressed to nursery headteachers and elementary school teachers of the first classes. On that occasion too, he did not fail to reiterate a theme he shared with his Tessin interlocutors, namely the importance of solving the greatest human problems, including educational problems, by recognising them as ‘problems of souls and not of method’ from the early years of childhood. Those who worked with the youngest enjoyed a privileged status, rather than a state of inferiority, because they ‘taught others with what understanding and love one should approach childhood’ (Bertolini 1938, p. 293). After all, it was precisely to the ‘humble reformers of the kindergarten’, such as Pietro Pasquali and the Agazzi sisters, that ‘all the credit was due for the reforms implemented in the elementary school’. This last admonition recognised the need for a close interdependence between an internal reform of the school, carried out through ‘careful’ pedagogical-​didactic work by the teachers, and an external reform of the school system, in the name of those principles of pedagogical-​didactic continuity and popularity of culture, that were particularly dear to the local teachers’ circuits (Scaglia 2020). A few weeks later, on 16 August 1938, Lombardo Radice died suddenly in the company of his wife Gemma during an ascent to the Croda da Lago refuge in Cortina d’Ampezzo, in the Belluno Alps.

Printed sources Bertolini, D. (1938):  L’ultima lezione. In:  L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana 80(11), pp. 291–​294. Franscini, S. (1985): Per lo sviluppo dell’istruzione in Canton Ticino, a cura di C.G. Lacaita. Caneggio (Original edition:  Per lo sviluppo dell’istruzione in Canton Ticino. Caneggio, 1828). G. (1932): Un piano didattico moderno per gli Asili. In: L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana 74(1), pp. 20–​27. Lombardo Radice, G. (1924): Il dialetto nella scuola. In: L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana 66(10), pp. 257–​261. Lombardo Radice, G. (1925a):  La scuola di Pila come specchio d’un mondo. In: L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana 67(1), pp. 1–​14. Lombardo Radice, G. (1925b): Le duecento osservatrici di ‘Mario’ nelle scuole elementari di Lugano. Saggio di estetica dell’arte puerile. In: L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana 67(4), pp. 65–​85. Lombardo Radice, G. (1925c):  Athena fanciulla. Scienza e poesia della scuola serena. Firenze.

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Lombardo Radice, G. (1926a): La nuova edizione del ‘Metodo della Pedagogia scientifica’ di Maria Montessori. In: L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana 68(12), pp. 235–​247. Lombardo Radice, G. (1926b): Postilla a R. Agazzi, I metodi italiani –​gli asili e il metodo Agazzi e Pasquali iniziatosi nel 1898. In: L’educazione nazionale 8(12), pp. 22. Lombardo Radice, G. (1928): Dal mio archivio didattico –​Il maestro esploratore, II supplemento a «L’educazione nazionale». Roma. Lombardo Radice, G. (1935): Appunti di un viaggio pedagogico. In: L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana 77(8–​9), pp. 201–​210. Lombardo Radice, G. (1936): Pedagogia di apostoli e di operai. Bari. Pelloni, E. (1924):  Le conferenze del prof. Lombardo-​Radice. In:  L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana 66(1), pp. 1–​4. Rossi, E. (1970): In memoria del prof. Ernesto Pelloni, 1884/​1970. In: L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana 112(3), pp. 28–​29. Senza autore (1927):  Priorità del metodo Agazzi sul metodo Montessori. In: L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana 69(11), pp. 249–​251. Senza autore (1932):  Barbarie, prime classi elementari, maestre disoccupate e asili infantili. In: L’Educatore della Svizzera italiana 74(11), pp. 257–​260. Senza autore (1933): Le maestre elementari negli asili infantili. Maestre ticinesi disoccupate, asili infantili e prime classi elementari. In: L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana, 75(1), pp. 14–​24. Sganzini, C. (1925): Pedagogia ed estetica dell’arte infantile (A proposito dell’opuscolo ‘Il linguaggio grafico dei fanciulli’ di Giuseppe Lombardo Radice). In: L’Educatore della Svizzera Italiana 67(9), pp. 160–​166.

References Agliati, M. (1991): Giuseppe Prezzolini e il Canton Ticino. In: Picco, I. (ed.): Militanti dell’ideale. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e Giuseppe Prezzolini. Lettere 1908–​1938. Locarno, pp. 73–​93. Cantatore, L. (2010):  Giuseppe Lombardo Radice:  per un’idea del quaderno scolastico come fonte artistico-​ letteraria. In:  Meda, J./​ Sani, R./​ Montino, D. (eds.):  School exercise books:  A complex source for a history of the approach to schooling and education in the 19th and 20th centuries. Firenze, pp. 1325–​1338. Caratti, S. (1980): Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e il Canton Ticino. In: Picco, I. (ed.): Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, Atti del convegno internazionale di studi per il centenario della nascita (1879–​1979). L’Aquila, pp. 255–​271.

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Catarsi, E./​Genovesi, G. (1995): L’infanzia a scuola. L’educazione infantile in Italia dalle sale di custodia alla materna statale. Bergamo. Ceschi, R. (2005): Ottocento ticinese. La costruzione di un cantone. Locarno. Cives, G. (1968):  ‘L’educazione nazionale’ (seconda serie:  1924–​1933). In:  La riforma della scuola 14(8–​9), pp. 41–​50. Cives, G. (1983): Attivismo e antifascismo in Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. «Critica didattica» o «didattica critica»?. Firenze. Hessen, S. (1954): La scuola serena di G. Lombardo Radice. La scuola del lavoro di G. Kerschensteiner, a cura di L. Volpicelli. Roma (Original edition: 1930). Marcacci, M. (2015): Diversificazione del sistema scolastico e tentativi di riforma (1915–​1958). In: Valsangiacomo, N./​Marcacci, M. (eds.): Per tutti e per ciascuno. La scuola pubblica nel Canton Ticino dall’Ottocento ai giorni nostri. Locarno, pp. 95–​135. Mazzetti, R. (1958):  Giuseppe Lombardo Radice tra l’idealismo pedagogico e Maria Montessori. Bologna. Meda, J. (2016): Mezzi di educazione di massa. Saggi di storia della cultura materiale della scuola tra XIX e XX secolo. Milano. Meda, J. (2021):  «Saldamente padrone della mia dignità e libertà». La difficile convivenza con il regime fascista (1925–​1931). In: Scaglia, E. (ed.): Una pedagogia dell’ascesa. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice e il suo tempo. Roma, pp. 61–​85. Rossi, F. (1959): Storia della scuola ticinese. Bellinzona. Sahlfeld, W. (2018):  Pädagogische Kulturtransfers Italien-​Tessin (1894–​1936). In: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Bildungswissenshaften 40(1), pp. 49–​66. Sahlfeld, W./​Vanini, A. (2018): La rete di Maria Montessori in Svizzera. In: Annali di storia dell’educazione e delle istituzioni scolastiche 25(25), pp. 163–​180. Saltini, L. (2006): Il Canton Ticino negli anni del Governo di Paese (1922–​1935). Milano. Scaglia, E. (2020):  La ‘pedagogia serena’ di Giuseppe Lombardo Radice fra le pagine de «L’educatore della Svizzera Italiana»:  dalle Lezioni di didattica a Pedagogia di apostoli e di operai (1913–​1936). In: CQIA rivista –​Formazione, lavoro, persona, 10(32), pp. 45–​83.

Andrea Dessardo

Central European influences on Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s concept of ‘national education’: His relations with Italian teachers in Austria-​Hungary Abstract

The political positions of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice have been analysed several times by scholars, who have often noted certain contradictions in his unorthodox socialism, from which he distanced himself close to the war, when he was a convinced interventionist. The thesis presented here concerns his political ideas, his idea of social justice and his patriotism, and his acquaintance with Italians from the Habsburg dominions, whom he had known since his high school days with not insignificant influence. Keywords: socialism, nationalism, Trieste, war, Austria-​Hungary

‘How wonderful to imagine what could have been done with it [the Julian school] after the liberation! By integrating it with the liberal tradition of Italian education, by infusing it with that complete educational spirituality for which our idealism has always fought, it would have become the model of the national school. And this was understood by the best educationalists who came to Venezia Giulia and got to know its school system more closely’ (Stuparich 1921). These were the words of Giani Stuparich (Bertacchini 1968; Damiani 1992; Senardi 2007), teacher at the ‘Dante’ ginnasio in Trieste, which he wrote in April 1921 on behalf of many of his colleagues to denounce –​two years after the end of the war –​the failure of his dream of reforming the Italian school, which, with the Trieste schools freed from Austrian domination, could have learned a great deal from the Adriatic school. It was not merely a matter of parochial pride, because some of the ‘best schoolmen who came to Venezia Giulia’, the most influential of whom was Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, had pondered this possibility. The aforementioned letter, which harshly attacked the inefficiencies of the Italian administration and the minister Croce himself (Tognon 1990), was in fact published in a supplement to L’educazione nazionale (Chiosso 1983), a journal founded and directed by the Catanese pedagogist.

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It was not the first time that Lombardo Radice had given space to the voices of Venezia Giulia: L’educazione nazionale had hosted articles by teachers from Trieste and Istria as early as November 1919 and it can therefore be said that the journal had an eye for the schools of the ‘unredeemed’ lands, to the extent that –​and this is the specific thesis of this essay –​Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s ideas on edu-​ cational reform seem to owe a great deal to his direct knowledge of the Italian schools in the Habsburg dominions; in particular this familiarity was probably even decisive for the elaboration of the crucial concept of ‘national education’, around which his most systematic work, L’ideale educativo e la scuola nazionale. Lezioni di pedagogia generale fondata sul concetto di autoeducazione (1916), was written. Carlo Lona, editor of Battaglie per la scuola [Battles for the School], the mouthpiece of the Trieste Magistral Union, clearly stated in L’educazione nazionale on 15 May 1921: ‘Lombardo Radice told us: ‘Defend your legislation and your school organisation to the hilt, because I tell you, in the name of my country’s interests, that your organisation is certainly in many points superior to ours. If you want to do any good, ask that the best of the existing legislation be retained and ask that the good that you find in our legislation be added’ (Lona 1921). It was obviously a prospect that appealed greatly to the teachers of Venezia Giulia, who in fact adhered largely to the Appello per un Fascio di educazione nazionale [= Appeal for a National Education Group] launched by the journal on 15 January 1920: in addition to Giani Stuparich, certainly the best known, there were twenty-​six other persons from Venezia Giulia, fifteen of whom were from Trieste, to which a further twenty-​six were added in the issue of 29 February, when the Lega degli insegnanti medi [= League of Middle School Teachers] of Venezia Giulia joined the campaign as a whole. This mass support culminated with the publication of a double monographic issue (n. 16–​17 of 15–​30 July 1920) entirely dedicated to schooling in the lands liberated from Austrian control after the First World War which, in addition to a description for the use of readers in the Peninsula, was clearly reformist in its intention. This is what Baccio Ziliotto, the headmaster of the ‘Dante’ ginnasio in Trieste, wrote: ‘Our national struggle was not just a conflict of races, but of two opposing and irreconcilable conceptions of the purpose of life, and the school was its most valuable weapon. [...] Thus the school took on a character of austerity, teaching was a religion, the teacher a missionary. The severity of studies was an indispensable condition, without which our young people could not enter public life armed with ideals, nor practical life equipped with the knowledge necessary to face competition from Slavs and Germans. [...] From this high function of the

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school also derived the mutual and touching understanding that existed between it and the family, between pupils and teachers’. He concluded his reasoning by wishing to ‘preserve the mechanism of Austrian legislation; of the ‘irredent’ school, the high ideals and severity of studies; adopt, of the Italian school, the spirit and culture’ (Ziliotto 1920). This approach was taken up by Filippo Giuffrida, a pupil of Lombardo Radice who had become a teacher at the ginnasio of Capodistria, who entitled one of his lectures Ab inimicis salus, arguing that ‘for the victory of arms to have lasting effects, it is necessary for us to take hold of the good things we find in the legislative organisation and in the various manifestations of the intellectual, economic and social life of the defeated enemy’ (Giuffrida 1920). He praised the ‘truly unlimited freedom’ enjoyed by the teachers in Austrian schools and the simplicity of their bureaucracy: ‘Officially stamped papers, revenue stamps and the associated endorsements and legalisations were absolutely unknown’. This level of freedom was combined with the great autonomy granted to schools, such that ‘no diploma was a priori valid for admission to the various institutes. Access to them was only by means of a rigorous entrance examination’.

The discovery of Venezia Giulia’s schools Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s relations with the world of Venezia Giulia date back to well before the war (Dessardo 2018). These relations were long-​standing and not only professional: it was in fact here that he found a wife in the person of the Fiume schoolteacher Gemma Harasim (Sistoli Paoli 2009), who introduced him to colleagues from Trieste and Istria shortly after their marriage, which took place in Fiume on 22 September 1910. They had met the year before in Firenze, in September 1909, at the Seventh Congress of the Federazione Italiana Insegnanti Scuola Media (Ambrosoli 1967), but they had already been corresponding for some time: in 1906, in fact, Gemma had printed 150 copies of a booklet on teaching the mother tongue, published by the small publisher Novak in her city. Thanks to a scholarship, the teacher from Fiume had come to Firenze between 1907 and 1908 to attend the Regio Istituto di Studi Superiori. It seems (Sistoli Paoli 2009, p. 21) that her book had fallen into the hands of her future husband through Benedetto Croce, who had received a copy as a gift from Riccardo Lenac, the Croatian translator of his Estetica [Aesthetics], who was Gemma Harasim’s half-​brother as the son of her mother’s first marriage. Intrigued by the work, Lombardo Radice proposed that the author should collaborate with him on Nuovi doveri (Tognon 1997; Raicich 1981; Rossi 2013), the journal he had recently founded: on 15 January and 15 February 1908 the Esercitazioni di lingua

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[Exercises of Language] were published there, followed on 29 February by the short essay Civiltà italiana e civiltà ungherese [Italian Civilization and Hungarian Civilization]. It’s important to remember that Fiume was falling under the dominion of the Crown of St. Stephen. In Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s past, however, one can find another distant encounter with a representative of the North Adriatic world:  Albino Zenatti, the director of the Messina high school from which he had graduated in 1897. Zenatti must have had a considerable influence on him, marking his interest in education, as he dedicated his first work on pedagogy, Studi sulla scuola secondaria. Dalla scuola elementare alla scuola secondaria classica. Note di pedagogia e di didattica (1905) to his former teacher. Evidence of Zenatti’s strong influence on Lombardo Radice’s education can also be found in his recollection of him in L’educazione nazionale in October 1926 (pp. 10–​13), describing him as ‘unforgettable and not forgotten by those who had been taught by him in Messina’ and recounting, among other things, how he spoke to his Sicilian students about the distant, still separated lands from which he came and whose reunification with the motherland he intensely desired. The son of parents from Trentino, Albino Zenatti was born in Trieste in 1859. He left his hometown in 1878 together with Guglielmo Oberdan, who was a year older than him, to avoid conscription in the Austro-​Hungarian army, which had occupied Bosnia-​Herzegovina in that year, taking refuge in Roma. After graduating in Romance philology in the Italian capital in 1881, Zenatti founded, together with Salomone Morpurgo, another exile from Trieste, the Archivio storico per Trieste, l’Istria e il Trentino [Historical Archive for Trieste, Istria and Trentino] (Goldin Folena 2002), a journal that remained active until 1895, that is, until the years in which Lombardo Radice attended high school. After teaching in Arpino, Lucca and Ferrara, Zenatti had arrived in Messina in 1894, staying there for only three years, because in 1897 he was transferred to Catania and then to Padova as a superintendent of studies and lecturer at the University, before ending his career back in Roma as an official at the Ministry of Education. Here he presided over the Inspectorate for Secondary Schools and, in wartime, like Giuseppe Lombardo Radice himself, became a point of reference for people from Venezia Giulia who passed through Italy illegally. Albino Zenatti did not live to see his irredentist hopes realised: Italy entered the war on 24 May 1915 and he died in Roma a few weeks later, on 6 August, aged just 56. His relationship with Giuseppe Lombardo Radice had remained active until the very end: Zenatti had in fact written to him again on 13 March 1915, inviting him to lend his name to the interventionist committee and asking him to involve as many academic colleagues as possible. In the same letter, the professor

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from Trieste also mentioned Gemma Harasim, whom he knew was against the war, hoping that in the meantime she had become ‘by now also an irredentist’1. Zenatti’s death, occurring in the course of that conflict for which he had waited so long, moved the Sicilian pedagogist: this is proven by the fact that, as can be seen from the letter of reply that his widow wrote to him on 2 December 1915, he had thought of dedicating L’ideale educativo e la scuola nazionale. Lezioni di pedagogia generale fondata sul concetto di autoeducazione to his memory. The work, that came out with an extensive additional section (Lombardo Radice 1961, pp. 135–​139) dedicated to schools in the Italian provinces of the Austro-​ Hungarian empire, was presented to the readers of the Kingdom as an example to imitate, in a similar way to what he would do after the war from the columns of L’educazione nazionale. In those years, as mentioned, Lombardo Radice had already had the opportunity to get to know the Trieste schools in a way that went beyond the superficial. His relationship with the teachers there, apart from his relationship with Zenatti, had begun immediately after his marriage to Gemma: in fact, the letter2 with which the president of the Federazione regionale degli insegnanti italiani del Litorale austriaco [= Regional Federation of Italian Teachers of the Austrian Littoral], Luigi Granello (Saltori 2010), sent Harasim the first three issues of the newly-​formed journal La Voce degli insegnanti [The Voice of Teachers] (De Rosa 1997), in which he expressed the wish for his colleagues Ferdinando Pasini and Mario Pasqualis to send their own contributions to Nuovi doveri, dates back to 27 October 1910. Luigi Granello’s intention was to establish a collaboration with Gemma Harasim and her husband that would last a long time, recognising Nuovi doveri as the most suitable political-​pedagogical guide for teachers from Venezia Giulia, but at the same time being convinced that the testimony of the latter could in turn be a stimulus to the readers of the Kingdom, in some way following the contemporary experiences of Scipio Slataper (Luperini 1997; Stuparich 1922) and other young teachers from Venezia Giulia (Pertici 1985) through Prezzolini’s La Voce [The Voice] (Carpi 1975; Gentile 1972), of which Slataper was one of the main contributors:  ‘In fact, I think it would be possible to establish an exchange of articles between the teachers here and the worthy group of colleagues at Nuovi

1 Giuseppe Lombardo Radice Archive, School and Education Museum, Roma 3 University, Correspondence, Z.12-​1. 2 Giuseppe Lombardo Radice Archive, School and Education Museum, Roma 3 University, Correspondence, G.78-​1.

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doveri in the sense that our members would collaborate with Nuovi doveri on the most interesting issues or didactic-​pedagogical innovations of the Austrian school administration in exchange for a few articles of a general nature to be published in Nuovi doveri and our periodical at the same time. That would, I believe, be to our mutual benefit’. This collaboration would evidently influence the training of teachers from Venezia Giulia, offering them perspectives that were significantly different from those provided by Austrian curricula, which were mostly positivist-​oriented (Hofer 1997); from a political perspective, such a collaboration with one of Italy’s leading pedagogical journals provided a clear opportunity nationally. Following those first correspondence contacts, Lombardo Radice delivered two lecture series in Trieste between 1912 and 1913 for the local Teachers’ League, which were summarised in the association’s magazine (La voce degli insegnanti, 38–​39/​1912; Todeschini 1913).

The educational ideal and the national school These years were those of Lombardo Radice’s academic consecration: Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale, his most successful work, came out in 1913, followed in 1916 by the aforementioned L’ideale educativo e la scuola nazionale. These are his most systematic works, the summa of his ideas on education and schooling: and in the latter, the concept of ‘national education’, later taken up again in 1919 in the masthead of the journal of his mature professional years, is stated in the title, indicating it as the goal of a possible reform, the highest possible form of education. Explaining the meaning of the work’s title, Lombardo Radice wrote that ‘my brief treatise can be considered, from top to bottom, a theory of family and national education, and, likewise, of social and human education in the universal’:  his was a contribution ‘to the concept of the nationality of education’ that he expressly referred back to the lessons of Vincenzo Gioberti and Giuseppe Mazzini, cultivating ‘the aspiration of suggesting by example –​albeit very ina-​ dequately! –​a broader treatment of the theme (so neglected until now in school textbooks) of the educating nation’ (Lombardo-​Radice 1961, p. 7). This premise was amicably reprimanded, as Hervé A. Cavallera recalls, by Giovanni Gentile, of whom Lombardo Radice also professed to be a friend, pupil and debtor, in a letter dated 13 April 1916: ‘I have some doubts about the success of the purpose I see announced in the title of the book and in the preface: about the nationality of education, as a fundamental concept of the doctrine you intend to develop. I fear that when you look at this aim you may become entangled in

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empirical concepts, not very consistent, that force you to make difficult and obscure accommodations of thought’ (Cavallera 1997, p. 440). What Gentile meant is that, contrary to appearances, the concept of nation is actually far from clear: however much we think we understand it in the sense of a natural element of our personal identity, it is instead an elusive social construct, which lends itself to different interpretations (Gellner 2006; Thiesse 1999; Anderson 1991; Hobsbawm 1990), and on which it is therefore complicated to base a pedagogical theory that aspires to be universally valid. However, it can be said that Lombardo Radice was aware of the weakness of his theories: he drew principles from experience, inductively, interpreting –​as Giovanni Giraldi suggests –​the lesson of Benedetto Croce: ‘He had meditated at length on Croce’s aesthetics; from it he had learnt, and was convinced, that art is an expression of the individual, that it is lyrical, that is, an expression of feelings in forms; and feelings are precisely the untransferable, mine, yours, that which belongs exclusively to me. Herein lies a serious difficulty:  either we renounce art, or we renounce education. Art, in fact, insists on and rests on the me (it is an expression of my particular self); how can one love art and at the same time consecrate oneself to the universal world?’ (Giraldi 1965, p. 56). ‘For Gentile’, Giraldi further reasons, ‘it was a valid doctrine that the state is a person, indeed the only authentic person, because it is an expression of the universal, historical hypostasis of the single subject’ (ibid., p. 67). Lombardo Radice did not accept this position, seeing the nation (and the state) only as a means to achieve the self-​awareness of a community and, individually, of its members, i.e. an instrument for the conquest of freedom, not the ultimate goal of the life of the spirit. Evidently Lombardo Radice derived the idea of ‘national education’ from Fichte in his Reden an die deutsche Nation [Addresses to the German Nation], but filtered it in the light of a social-​humanitarian thought, which remained alive in him even after he detached himself from the Socialist Party (Cuccia 1968). For Lombardo Radice, says Giorgio Chiosso, ‘the nation-​state is that in which each person freely carries out his own activities and participates in sovereignty, collaborating in the direction of common life without limitations other than those of his own strength’ (Chiosso 1983, p. 107); and again: ‘Making Italians is making men, honest, strong and healthy beings’ (ibid., p. 108). Roberto Mazzetti wrote of Lombardo Radice’s socialism: ‘It was a socialism as sensitive to the values of democracy as it was to the values of national life, a socialism in which the voices of Gioberti and Mazzini echoed strongly. This socialism was expressed in terms of popular education, first, and then national education. It supported Crispi’s programme to spread Italianness abroad and,

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especially, the Italian penetration of the Mediterranean basin through schooling and trade’ (Mazzetti 1958, p. 21).

Adriatic socialism In our opinion, in light of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice’s biographical story, his particular way of interpreting socialism was the result of his encounter with the Adriatic world, especially with his wife, who, as already mentioned, unlike her husband, was opposed to Italy’s military intervention and, although culturally Italian, was not hostile to the supranational framework of the Austro-​Hungarian empire. Her subsequent political choices, with her active participation in the Resistance, and the events in her family, support this impression. In fact, we recall that her half-​brother Riccardo (Rikard) Lenac played a prominent role in the political life of Fiume: a militant of the Croatian National Party –​he had studied in Zagreb –​, at the end of the war he was appointed to represent the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to the leadership of the city, a role he held until the Italian occupation and one which, we imagine, was likely to embarrass his brother-​in-​law. Austrian socialism (Agnelli 1969; Cattaruzza 1998)3 had long been concerned with the so-​called Nationalitätsfrage, the national question, which appeared as one of the most urgent problems within the nexus of the Habsburg state. The congress celebrated by the party in Brno (Moravia) in 1899 had shown the way forward. In short, it called for the transformation of the empire into a federation on an ethno-​national basis, changing the historical borders of the various Kronländer to coincide as far as possible with the areas of settlement of the various national groups, guaranteeing complete autonomy for each, with elections by ‘direct and equal’ universal suffrage (and not census, as was the case at the time) and guaranteeing in any case that subjects residing in linguistic areas other than their own could vote together with their national group (Lagi 2011). Such an approach led to the individual nations being seen as a vector of emancipation rather than an instrument at the service of imperialism: both collectively for the so-​called ‘nations without history’, and individually for those belonging to the working classes; in Renner’s conception, ‘nations represented a “natural” (and thus pre-​political) reality, to be organised in the form of autonomous sub-​ state Körperschaften’ (Cattaruzza 1998, p. 82).

3 A recent annotated bibliography can be found in Jeličić, I. (2020): La parabola del socialismo adriatico. In: Qualestoria 1, pp. 169–​176.

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Returning to the Austrian socialists, however, we must note with Marina Cattaruzza the contradictions that Brno’s programme brought with it: ‘The principle whereby the nation was dissolved from any territorial reference had as its corollary the dissociation between loyalty to the nation and, respectively, to the state. It could thus form the background for a supranational state patriotism, superior to that towards the nation, as in Renner’s case, but with just as much theoretical coherence it could drive the cultural nation out of the given state context. In fact, the Brno Congress failed to satisfactorily resolve the problem of national organisation within the Habsburg state’ (ibid., pp. 83–​84). Indeed, although the official party line pointed towards the path of the supranational state, this did not prevent the various socialist sections, especially among the Slavic peoples, from gradually moving towards the idea of achieving full national sovereignty or, as in the case of the Italians of Austria, unification with their motherland. Suffice it to say that, from 1907, under pressure from the Czechs, the Social Democratic parliamentary group in Vienna organised itself into clubs on a national basis. When thinking about the Italians, one cannot but consider the figure of the socialist Cesare Battisti from Trentino. While in Trieste, a city with a strong industrial vocation and a well-​organised working class (Piemontese 1961; Maserati 1973; Agnelli 1978; Apih 1991; Rutar 2004), the socialists, led since 1902 by Valentino Pittoni, always remained scrupulously faithful to the supranational programme, this line was much more difficult to respect in Istria, a predominantly rural land, where industrial complexes were highly concentrated (mostly in Pola and a few other towns) and where the cleavage between town and country was very much felt, often coinciding with the national division between Italians and Croats or Slovenes. In a pamphlet from 1905, Socialismo e questioni nazionali in Istria [Socialism and National Questions in Istria], for example, the Visinada leader Giuseppe Tuntar (Patat 1989), who in 1921 would be elected to the Parliament in Roma in the ranks of the newly formed Communist Party and would later die a political exile in Argentina in 1940, noted that, in response to the spread of clerical propaganda among Croatian peasants, it was precisely in the support of Italian culture in the region that the foundations for the establishment of socialism in Istria could be laid (Cattaruzza 1998, p. 103). Another authoritative voice of Istrian socialism, certainly known to Gemma Harasim and therefore, at least by reputation, to Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, was that of the schoolteacher from Albona, Giuseppina Martinuzzi (Cetina 1970), for whom, on the other hand, ‘the fraternity of the two proletariats in the mutual respect of their respective languages was not only the only way to bring Istria out of its centuries-​old backwardness and misery, but also the only possibility for the

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long-​term survival of Italian culture in the area’ (Cattaruzza 1998, p. 105). This is how she explained the mission of socialism: ‘Socialism does not want to destroy anything that nature has made; therefore, it could not even be concerned with eliminating some of the languages whose truth is beauty, is the multiform richness of thought: on the contrary, it wants each one to develop freely according to the genius of the peoples, and to be an instrument of progressive civilisation and a natural means of dear satisfaction for them: it wants them all to be respected as all honest people respect the intimate bonds of the family’ (ibid., p. 106). Marina Cattaruzza observes about the ideas of the Istrian socialists:  ‘Paradoxically, in their heterodoxy, they nevertheless ended up faithfully reflecting the factual reality of national relations within social democracy in Austria, characterised by strong tensions, prejudices and centrifugal tendencies’ (ibid., pp. 118–​119). In 1909 –​we note as a curiosity –​a young Benito Mussolini, still an ardent socialist militant, was sent to Trento for nine months to direct the weekly L’Avvenire del lavoratore [The Future of the Worker]. His encounter with Cesare Battisti and the Trentino’s socialists was extremely frustrating for him: ‘Mussolini was everything the socialists of Trentino were not: an unpatriotic internationalist, uninterested in irredentism, an agitator and revolutionary frustrated and annoyed by the complacent revisionism of Battisti’s followers’ (Rusinow 2010, p. 47). The self-​organisation of the different national groups, and their sometimes bitter competition in the multilingual regions, was a process that had already been going on for some time in Austria-​Hungary (Klabjan 2019), where the different factions were fighting among themselves for the government of municipalities and provincial assemblies. Hence the wide flourishing of patriotic associations and leagues, and above all the great commitment, both economic and organisational, to education, which was truly one of the main concerns of local administrations (Dessardo 2016). Lacking a territory to refer to, a state to protect its national interests, the homeland, in many contexts –​certainly in Trieste –​had turned into an idea, an idea to be inhabited and defended (Ara/​Magris 1981, p. 8). In his Lezioni di pedagogia generale, Lombardo Radice admired the amount spent of the battles undertaken by the Municipality of Trieste on the education front: ‘Trieste [...] managed to triple its contribution to the school struggle in ten years (1900–​1910), spending exactly twice as much as free Milano’ (Lombardo Radice 1961, p. 137). And again: ‘Entire Italian provinces of the kingdom with a population double or triple that of Trieste spent far less on schools in the same period than it did. With its forces alone Trieste reduced illiteracy from about fifty per cent (around 1866) to less than ten per cent (around 1910)’. And it is

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from the figures of this competition for survival that the author, continuing the reasoning that supported the main thesis of the book, derived the right to the independence of the nation state for the full realisation of the individual person.

To conclude ‘Seen with hindsight’, commented Dennison Ivan Rusinow, ‘it is not surprising that most national-​liberals would turn to Fascism, that Trieste’s socialism would become communist, and that the Mazzinians of 1918 would provide the Resistance of 1943 with its non-​communist leaders’ (Rusinow 2010, p. 105): but in the middle of the Great War all this was still not at all clear, and Giuseppe Lombardo Radice found himself in the middle of it. He, a sincere democrat, found himself caught up in a context that would soon explode into violence. In Il popolo d’Italia [The People of Italy] of 20 September 1920, for example, Mussolini predicted that ‘it may be that the fascists of Venezia Giulia will be the start of a great movement of general renewal and will constitute the generous and combative van-​ guards of the Italy that we dream of and prepare’ (ibid., p. 128). Looking retrospectively at the parable Lombardo Radice provides, however, we must bitterly note that, this being the case, the Catanese pedagogist internalised the structural weaknesses and neuroses of that world, which would lead those territories to lose their traditionally plural character in a few decades and, therefore, to distort themselves, rather than find the root of their own identity, to the point that ‘the great season of Trieste’s culture, that is, the period before the First World War, began with an awareness and denunciation of its own spiritual void’ (Ara/​Magris 1981, p. 5). Here, it seems to us that Lombardo Radice, a sincere admirer of that small Adriatic world, did not realise that this apparent blossoming was in fact ‘an attempt to transform a sunset into an aurora’, since it was precisely ‘in those years that Trieste was beginning its true cultural history and at the same time concluding its most vital historical season’ (ibid., p. 61).

References Agnelli, A. (1969): Questione nazionale e socialismo. Contributo allo studio del pensiero di K. Renner e O. Bauer. Bologna. Agnelli, A. (1978): Socialismo triestino, Austria e Italia. In: Valiani, L./​Wandruszka, A. (eds.): Il movimento operaio e socialista in Italia e in Germania dal 1870 al 1920. Bologna, pp. 221–​280.

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Ambrosoli, L. (1967): La Federazione nazionale insegnanti scuola media dalle origini al 1925. Firenze. Anderson, B. (1991):  Imagined communities. Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London. Apih, E. (1991): Il socialismo italiano in Austria. Udine. Bertacchini, R. (1968): Giani Stuparich. Firenze. Carpi, U. (1975): ‘La Voce’: letteratura e primato degli intellettuali. Bari. Cattaruzza, M. (1998):  Socialismo adriatico. La socialdemocrazia di lingua italiana nei territori costieri della Monarchia asburgica:  1888–​ 1915. Manduria (TA). Cavallera, H.A. (1997): Giovanni Gentile e Giuseppe Lombardo-​Radice: i paradigmi della pedagogia. In: Spadafora, G. (ed.): Giovanni Gentile. La pedagogia, la scuola. Roma, pp. 427–​459. Cetina, M. (ed.) (1970): Giuseppina Martinuzzi. Documenti del periodo rivoluzionario, 1869–​1925. Pola. Chiosso, G. (1983a):  L’educazione nazionale da Giolitti al primo dopoguerra. Brescia. Coda, E. (2007): Scipio Slataper. Palermo. Cuccia, S. (1968): Socialista a Catania (1909–​1914). In: Riforma della scuola 8–​ 9(14), pp. 11–​20. Damiani, R. (1992): Giani Stuparich. Trieste. De Rosa, D. (1997): Battaglie per la scuola. In: Chiosso, G. (ed.): La stampa pedagogica e scolastica in Italia (1820–​1943). Brescia, p. 739. Dessardo, A. (2016): Le ultime trincee. Politica e vita scolastica a Trento e Trieste (1918–​1923). Brescia. Dessardo, A. (2018):  Lo spirito nazionale nella scuola. Lettere dalla Venezia Giulia a Giuseppe Lombardo-​Radice. Trieste. Gellner, E. (2006): Nations and nationalism (2nd ed.). Oxford. Gentile, E. (1972): ‘La Voce’ e l’età giolittiana. Milano. Giraldi, G. (1965): Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. Roma. Giuffrida, F. (1920): ‘Ab inimicis salus’. In: L’educazione nazionale, 30 aprile. Goldin Folena, D. (2002): Albino Zenatti e l’‘Archivio storico per Trieste, l’Istria e il Trentino’. In: Allegri, M. (ed.): Rovereto in Italia dall’irredentismo agli anni del fascismo, 1890–​1939. Rovereto (TN), pp. 359–​378. Hobsbawm, E.J. (1990): Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality (2nd ed.). Cambridge.

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Hofer, G. (1997):  Sviluppi e orientamenti della scuola secondaria nel Litorale austriaco tra XIX e XX secolo. In: Quaderni giuliani di storia 18(1), pp. 9–​53. Klabjan, B. (2019): Borderlands of memory. Adriatic and Central European perspectives. Oxford. Lagi, S.  (2011):  Karl Renner:  Staat und Nation (1899). In:  Res Publica 25, pp. 109–​124. Lombardo-​Radice, G. (1905): Studi sulla scuola secondaria. Dalla scuola elementare alla scuola secondaria classica. Note di pedagogia e di didattica. Catania. Lombardo-​Radice, G. (1913):  Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale. Palermo. Lombardo-​Radice, G. (1961): L’ideale educativo e la scuola nazionale. Lezioni di pedagogia generale fondata sul concetto di autoeducazione. Palermo. Lona, C. (1921): Sistemazione della scuola del popolo nella Venezia Giulia. In: L’educazione nazionale, 15 maggio. Luperini, R. (1977): Scipio Slataper. Firenze. Maserati, E. (1973): Il movimento operaio a Trieste dalle origini alla prima guerra mondiale. Milano. Mazzetti, R. (1958): Giuseppe Lombardo Radice tra l’idealismo pedagogico e Maria Montessori. Bologna. Patat, L. (1989): Giuseppe Tuntar. Udine. Pertici, R. (ed.) (1985):  Intellettuali di frontiera. Triestini a Firenze (1900–​ 1950). Atti del Convegno (18–​20 marzo 1983). Firenze. Piemontese, G. (1961): Il movimento operaio a Trieste. Dalle origini alla fine della prima guerra mondiale. Udine. Raicich, M. (1981): Gli anni dei ‘Nuovi doveri’ (1907–​1913). In: Raicich, M. (ed.): Scuola, cultura e politica da De Sanctis a Gentile. Pisa, pp. 326–​348. Rossi, R. (2013): I Nuovi doveri. La pedagogia della scuola di Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. Cosenza. Rusinow, D.I. (2010): L’Italia e l’eredità austriaca 1919–​1946. Venezia (or. ed. Italy’s Austrian Heritage, 1919–​1946, Oxford University Press 1969). Rutar, S.  (2004):  Kultur-​Nation-​Milieu. Sozialdemokratie in Triest vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Essen. Saltori, M. (ed.) (2010): Archivio Luigi Granello (1880–​1967). Trento. Senardi, F. (2007): Il giovane Stuparich. Trieste, Praga, Firenze, le trincee del Carso. Trieste. Sistoli Paoli N. (ed.) (2009): Gemma Harasim. L’impegno educativo. Antologia di scritti su cultura, scuola, famiglia. Roma.

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Stuparich, G. (1921):  Considerazioni amare di un insegnante della Venezia Giulia. In: Fogli di ‘collegamento’ dei Gruppi d’azione per la scuola, aprile 1921. Stuparich, G. (1922): Scipio Slataper. Firenze. Stuparich, G./​Stuparich, C. (2019): Lettere di due fratelli, 1913–​1916. Trieste. Thiesse, A.M. (1999):  La création des identités nationales. Europe, 18e-​20e siècle. Paris. Todeschini, M. (1913):  ‘Come si uccidono le anime’. Giuseppe Lombardo Radice alla Lega degli insegnanti di Trieste. In: La Voce degli insegnanti 42(4), 15 Novembre, pp. 14–​15. Tognon, G. (1990): Benedetto Croce alla Minerva. La politica scolastica italiana tra Caporetto e la marcia su Roma. Brescia. Tognon, G. (1997): Nuovi doveri. In: Chiosso, G. (ed.): La stampa pedagogica e scolastica in Italia, 1820–​1943, ad vocem. Brescia. Ziliotto, B. (1920): Noi redenti. In: L’educazione nazionale, 30 aprile.

About the Authors Paolo Alfieri is Assistant Professor of History of Education at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan (Italy). His main research interests include: history of physical education, history of popular Catholic education, religious education in the history of childhood and youth, school memories and, in particular, the role of cinema and television in the construction of immaterial educational heritage. He has published three monographs, two edited books and multiple contributions to book series and specialist journals in Italy and across Europe. He was awarded the Italian Centre for Historical-​Educational Research’s Prize in 2014 and the Italian Education Award in 2018. He is also an associate investigator of the National Project PRIN 2017, funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, on ‘School memories between social perception and collective representation. Italy, 1861–​2001’. Yasmina Álvarez-​González is a graduate in Pedagogy from the University of La Laguna, Canary Islands, Spain (2010), and holds a Master’s degree in Innovation and Research in Education, specialised in History of Education and Comparative Education from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) (2012). She obtained her PhD in Education at the University of La Laguna (2019), where she is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Education and Language. She has participated in several research projects, including ‘The boundary between science and politics and the politics and science at the boundary: Spanish science, 1907–​1975, FFI2015-​64529-​P’. Currently, she is participating in the project ‘The Copernican turn in education and science policy under Franco’s developmentalism: from subsidiarity to State intervention’, PID2020-​ 114249GB-​I00. Her lines of research focus on the history of pedagogy as an academic discipline under early Francoism and on the gender perspective. Lorenzo Cantatore is Full Professor of History of Education at the University of Roma 3 (Italy), where he directed the MuSEd –​Museo della Scuola e dell’Educazione (Museum of School and Education) and coordinates the PhD programme in Educational and Social Theory and Research. He is the author and editor of monographs, essays, and catalogues of Italian school-​educational culture between the 19th and 20th centuries. His main research interests include, especially, the intersections between arts, literature and education (Scelta, ordinata e annotata: l’antologia scolastica nel secondo Ottocento e il laboratorio Carducci-​Brilli, Modena 1999; Parva sed apta mihi: il paesaggio domestico nella letteratura per l’infanzia fra XIX e XX secolo, Pisa 2015). He is the editor, with Susanna Barsotti, of the handbook Letteratura per

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l’infanzia: forme, temi e simboli del contemporaneo (Roma 2019). Many of his studies concern the figure of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, such as the new Italian editions of the volumes Come si uccidono le anime (Pisa 2020) and Lezioni di didattica e ricordi di esperienza magistrale (Roma 2022). Gabriella D’Aprile is Associate Professor in General and Social Education at the Department of Educational Sciences of the University of Catania (Italy). Her research interests follow two main lines: theoretical-​epistemological, relating to issues and problems of intercultural education and learning education (in both bio-​pedagogical and green perspectives); and historical-​educational, relating to models, issues, and figures of the International Active School Movement and New Education, at national and international level. In this second research line, she discovered unpublished sources about Adolphe Ferrière and Giuseppe Lombardo Radice (Italian Education Award 2020 for the monograph Memorie di una inedita corrispondenza. Lettere di Giuseppe Lombardo Radice ad Adolphe Ferrière, Ets, Pisa 2019) and Sicily’s education (International Prize ‘Francesco Saverio Nitti per il Mediterraneo’ for the volume with Maria Tomarchio, La terra come luogo di cura educativa in Sicilia, Bonanno, Roma-​Acireale 2014). Andrea Dessardo (Trieste, 1984) has been Researcher in History of Education at the European University of Roma (Italy) since 2016, where he also teaches Children’s Literature. In 2014 he obtained a PhD in Theory, History and Educational Methods at LUMSA University in Roma and since 2018 he has held the National Scientific Qualification as Associate Professor. He teaches History of school and educational policies at the University of Trieste. His research interests concern, above all, the history of schooling in the early 20th century, with a particular attention on boundary areas and the Catholic educational movement. The monograph Lo spirito nazionale nella scuola. Lettere dalla Venezia Giulia a Giuseppe Lombardo-​Radice (Meudon, Trieste 2018) concerns the figure of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice. His other works include: Le ultime trincee. Politica e vita scolastica a Trento e Trieste (1918–​1923), La Scuola, Brescia 2016; L’Associazione magistrale ‘Nicolò Tommaseo’. Storia di maestri cattolici, 1906–​1930, AVE, Roma 2018; Educazione e scuola nel pensiero di don Sturzo e nel programma del Partito popolare italiano, Studium, Roma 2021. Juri Meda is Associate Professor with the Department of Education, Cultural Heritage and Tourism at the University of Macerata (Italy), where he lectures on the History of Education. He is a member of the Executive Committees of the Italian Centre for Historical-​Educational Research (CIRSE) and of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE). He also serves on the advisory board

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of several academic journals. He has published numerous monographs, essays and articles, the majority of which have been devoted to the material and visual history of school and school memory. His most recent book is: I «Monumenta Italiae Paedagogica» e la costruzione del canone pedagogico nazionale, 1886–​1956 (Milan, 2019). Evelina Scaglia is Associate Professor of History of Education at the Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Bergamo (Italy). She teaches History of School Education in the Master’s degree programme in Primary Teacher Education and History of Early Childhood Education in the Bachelor’s degree programme in Education Sciences. Her main research interests concern the history of Italian Christian education in the 20th century, the history of early childhood education from ancient times to nowadays, and the history of primary teacher education. The results of her research have been disseminated in monographs, edited books, multiple contributions to book series and specialist journals, as well as papers delivered at national and international conferences. She was awarded the Prize of the Italian Centre for Historical-​Educational Research in 2014 and the Italian Education Award in 2018 and 2023. Brunella Serpe is Associate Professor of History of Education at the University of Calabria (Italy). She teaches History of School and Education and Children’s Literature in the Master’s degree programme in Primary Teacher Education. She belongs to various scientific societies and is Vice President of the National Association for the Interests of the Italian Mezzogiorno (ANIMI). She is the author of monographs, essays and papers concerning the history of Italian schools, especially in Southern Italy and in the Italian-​Albanian linguistic communities in Calabria, and certain periods and figures in the philanthropic associations of the 19th and 20th centuries. Giuseppe Zago is Full Professor of History of Education at the University of Padova (Italy). He teaches History of Education and History of Historiography of Education in Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes. He has led several historical studies about educational institutions and figures of pedagogists and educators from the 15th century to nowadays. His research topics also concern the reconstruction of the relationship between education and work in modern and contemporary ages and the methodological in-​depth knowledge of historical research in the educational field. He belongs to the Scientific Committee of various specialist journals and editorial series in the field of History of Education.

Name index A Agazzi R. 17, 88, 90, 135, 137, 140-​145 Agliati M. 136, 137 Agnelli A. 156, 157 Alfieri P. 15, 67, 68, 77 Allegri M. 160 Álvarez González Y. 119 Ambrosoli L. 151 Amendola A. 32 Anderson B. 155 Antinori F. 93 Apih E. 157 B Barausse A. 57 Bauer O. 159 Baumann E. 71 Bergomi A. 57 Bertacchini R. 149 Bertolini D. 145 Bertoni Jovine D. 38 Betti C. 87 Bonalumi G. 81 Borghi L. 97 Borruso F. 24 Bovet P. 60, 125, 126, 130, 133 C Calabri M.C. 32 Calderara A. 27 Cambi F. 24 Campioni G. 55 Canales Serrano A. F. 7, 118 Cantatore L. 10, 15, 24, 25, 27, 28, 33, 51, 126, 140 Caratti S. 138 Carpi U. 153

Catarsi E. 144 Cattaruzza M. 156, 157, 158 Cavallera H.A. 8, 53,55, 83, 154, 155 Ceschi R. 136 Cetina M. 157 Charnitzky J. 11, 61, 73, 74, 77, 89 Chiosso G. 8, 10-​13, 27, 70, 72-​74, 77, 128, 149, 155 Cives G. 13, 14, 27, 31, 38, 51, 69, 70, 71, 77, 83, 84, 91, 95, 99, 101, 131, 138, 140 Claparède E. 60, 124 Codignola E. 11, 53, 83, 91 Colaci A.M. 41, 129 Colapietra R. 55 Comenius G.A. 10, 34 Credaro L. 57, 82, 85, 89, 114, 136, 137 Crespi F. 56, 81 Croce B. 39, 40, 55, 56, 83, 151, 155 Cuccia S. 155 D D’Aprile G. 16, 60, 123, 124 D’Arcangeli M.A. 82 D’Ascenzo M. 27 Damiani R. 149 De Feo G.C. 89 De Giorgi F. 7, 81, 85, 86 De Rosa D. 153 Del Pozo Andrés M. M. 120 Dessardo A. 16, 17 Di Donato M. 72 Díez Torre A. R. 120 Don Bosco G. 76

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Name index

F Fernández Soria J.M. 120 Ferrara P. 72 Ferrari M. 79 Ferrière A. 7, 13, 16, 60, 116, 123-​125, 128, 129, 131, 138 Finazzi Sartor R. 93 Foschi R. 94 Franscini S. 136, 141 Fuster F. 111 G Galli N. 78 Garcia J. 117, 120 Gatti G.L. 84 Gellner E. 155 Genovesi G. 144 Gentile E. 74 Gentile G. 8-​12, 39, 45, 51, 52, 59, 68, 83, 89, 113-​115, 135, 137, 154 Gentili R. 53 Gerosa G. 65 Giraldi G. 155 Giuffrida F. 151 Goetz H. 64 Goldin Folena D. 152 Goy H. 61 Granello L. 153 Guidolin E. 93 Gutierrez L. 129 H Hameline D. 123, 124 Harasim G. 10, 17, 23, 25, 28, 32, 57, 151, 153, 157 Hessen H. 90, 96, Hessen S. 135 Hobsbawm E.J. 155 Hofer G. 154 Isnardi G. 37, 39, 40, 41, 43, 46, 49, 54

K Karstädt O. 61, 65 Kiciman V. 124 Klabjan B. 158 Klinkhammer L. 35 Kramer R. 81 L Lacaita G.C. 145 Laeng M. 52, 87, 88 Lagi S. 156 Lanfranchi R. 76 Leenders H. 81 Lo Moro F. 55 Lombardo Radice L. 31 Lona C. 150 Ingrao C. 50 Lucisano P. 123 Luperini R. 153 Lupi A. 82 Lussi C. 124 Luzuriaga L. 16, 111, 115, 116, 118-​119,  129 M Malvezzi G. 42 Marcacci M. 137 Martinuzzi G. 157 Marzano A. 123 Maserati E. 157 Mattei F. 54 Mazzetti R. 53, 69, 140, 155, 156 Mazzoni E. 125, 127, 128 Meda J. 15, 26, 32, 81, 138, 140 Minesso M. 87 Montessori M. 16, 81, 82-​92, 115, 125, 141, 143 Montino D. 33 Morandi M. 68 Moretti E. 94 Muller V. 124 Muñoz O. 113, 116, 119

Name index

N Natoli C. 31, 32 Negri C. 127, 131, 139 O Ostenc M. 131 P Patat L. 157 Pati L. 78 Patri A. 61 Pelloni E. 57, 61, 135, 136, 139 Pepe G. 61 Pertici R. 153 Pescosolido G. 37 Pestalozzi J.H. 49, 57, 58, 59, 64, 115, 116, 137, 141, 141 Picco I. 9, 55 Piemontese G. 157 Pintor G. 32 Ponzio A. 73, 77 Prezzolini G. 10, 54-​56, 62, 63, 135, 137 R Raicich M. 151 Randone F. 89 Rapone L. 35 Ravà A. 59 Rebora P. 61 Renner K. 156, 157 Rossi E. 136 Rossi F. 137, 141 Rossi R. 151 Rusinow D.I. 158, 159 Rutar S. 157 S Sáez Morillo M. 115 Sahlfeld W. 136, 141 Sainz Amor C. 111, 112, 116, 117, 119 Saltini L. 143, 144

Saltori M. 153 Salvemini G. 9, 37, 52, 97 Salvoni M. 127, 130 Sani R. 33, 64, 146 Scaglia E. 17, 38, 58, 117, 139, 145 Seguro Redondo M. 120 Senardi F. 149 Serpe B. 15 Sganzini C. 57, 140, 143 Sistoli Paoli N. 32, 151 Slataper S. 153 Spadafora G. 64, 160 Spirito U. 13, 83 Stefanini L. 34 Stewart-​Steinberg S. 68 Stizzo F. 44 Strongoli R.C. 126 Stuparich G. 149, 150, 153 Sweetser A. 125 T Thiesse A.M. 155 Todaro L. 133 Todeschini M. 154 Tognon G. 83, 149, 151 Tomarchio M. 13, 123 Trabalzini P. 82 Trombetta C. 60 Tuntar G. 157 V Valiani L. 159 Valitutti S. 83 Valsangiacomo N. 147 Vanini A. 141 Varisco B. 57, 136 Vilafranca I. 117 Vilanou C. 117 Viñao A. 118 Vittoria A. 32 Volpicelli M. 129

169

170 W Wallace J.M. 61 Wandruszka A. 159

Name index

Z Zago G. 7, 16, 118 Zanotti Bianco U. 39, 41, 42, 48, 53 Zenatti A. 152, 153 Ziliotto B. 150, 151

Erziehung in Wissenschaft und Praxis Herausgegeben von Johanna Hopfner

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Johanna Hopfner: Gelegentliche Gedanken über Erziehung. 2008.

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Johanna Hopfner / András Németh (Hrsg.): Pädagogische und kulturelle Strömungen in der k. u. k. Monarchie. Lebensreform, Herbartianismus und reformpädagogische Bewegungen. 2008.

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Agnes Trattner: Piercing, Tattoo und Schönheitsoperationen. Jugendliche Protesthaltung oder psychopathologische Auffälligkeit? Eine pädagogische Studie zum Körpererleben in der weiblichen Adoleszenz. 2008.

Band

4

Edvard Protner / Vladimir Wakounig / Robi Krofličč (Hrsg.): Pädagogische Konzeptionen zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft. Ambivalenzen, Begriffsverwirrungen und Reformeifer. 2009.

Band

5

Johanna Hopfner / András Németh / Éva Szabolcs (Hrsg.): Kindheit – Schule – Erziehungswissenschaft in Mitteleuropa 1948–2008. 2009.

Band

6

Claudia Gerdenitsch: Erst kommt die Ästhetik, dann kommt die Moral. Bedingungen der Möglichkeit von Moralerziehung. 2010.

Band

7

Attila Nóbik / Béla Pukánszky (Hrsg.): Normalität, Abnormalität und Devianz. Gesellschaftliche Konstruktionsprozesse und ihre Umwälzungen in der Moderne. 2010.

Band

8

Claudia Gerdenitsch / Johanna Hopfner (Hrsg./eds.): Erziehung und Bildung in ländlichen Regionen – Rural Education. 2011.

Band

9

András Németh / Ehrenhard Skiera (Hrsg.): Lehrerbildung in Europa. Geschichte, Struktur und Reform. 2012.

Band

10

Edvard Protner: Herbartianism and its Educational Consequences in the Period of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The Case of Slovenia. 2014.

Band

11

András Németh / Claudia Stöckl / Beatrix Vincze (eds./Hrsg.): Survival of Utopias – Weiterlebende Utopien. Life Reform and Progressive Education in Austria and Hungary – Lebensreform und Reformpädagogik in Österreich und Ungarn. 2017.

Band

12

Barbara Šteh, Janko Muršak, Jasna Mažgon, Jana Kalin and Mrvar Gregorčič: School – Home – Community: Inevitable Connections. 2018.

Band

13

Beatrix Vincze / Katalin Kempf / András Németh (eds.): Hidden Stories – the Life Reform Movements and Art. 2020.

Band

14

Simonetta Polenghi / András Németh / Tomáš Kasper (eds.): Education and the Body in Europe (1900-1950) – Movement, public health, pedagogical rules and cultural ideas. 2021.

Band

15

Claudia Stöckl / Agnes Trattner (Hrsg.): Erziehen in einer unübersichtlich gewordenen Welt. Positionen, Widersprüche, Utopien 2020.

Band

16

Evelina Scaglia (ed.): Giuseppe Lombardo Radice in the early 20th century. A rediscovery of his pedagogy. 2023.

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