Early Childhood Education in Italy and the Gentile Reform (1923): The Relationship Between Reform Theories and Pedagogical Practice

Exactly a century ago, the Mussolini government launched a sweeping reform of the Italian school system that had been drawn up by the then-Minister of Education, the philosopher Giovanni Gentile. Informed by the theoretical principles of neo-idealism, this reform had a profound impact on the history of Italian education. It also represents an interesting case study within the history of Western educational culture, due to its radical break with the positivist culture that had dominated up to that point. Although Gentile’s education system was primarily designed to train the elite class, the minister also focused on pedagogically enhancing elementary schooling and boosting early childhood education (3-6 years). The disadvantaged and primitive conditions of Italian infant schools had been criticized from many quarters for decades. The previous lack of political interest in infant schools – which were legally classified as charitable institutions – and their staff had meant that their aims were primarily welfare-oriented and that they were under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior, accorded marginal status compared to the other levels of education. Now, for the first time in Italy, thanks to the Gentile Reform, early childhood education became part of the school system as “preparatory” to elementary education. The infant school, now referred to as the “scuola maternal”, was defined as an “instructional and educational” institution and to ensure that kindergarten teachers received training suited to this new purpose, a dedicated teacher education programme was set up. The new curricula for kindergartens, drawn up by Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, an authoritative exponent of neo-idealist pedagogy, adopted a perspective on education and teaching that was based on a new vision of pupil, teacher and method. In part akin to some of the ideas of the New Schools movement (the value of children’s spontaneous initiatives, the parallels between school and everyday life), Lombardo Radice’s pedagogy was nonetheless underpinned by a romantic-poetic rather than an empirical-experimental view of childhood. In line with the most recent approaches in historical-educational research, this study investigated whether the theoretical principles of the Gentile Reform translated into concrete change in the early childhood education sector and true innovation in teaching practices. To this end, sources that have not yet been fully exploited by history of education research were critically examined. Specifically, the analysis focused on two of the most authoritative early childhood education magazines of the period («La Voce delle Maestre d’Asilo» and «Pro Infantia») and evaluation studies conducted by the Ministry of Education over the decade following the introduction of the new legislation (1923-1933). This documentation was scrutinized to assess the extent of the gap between developments in academic educational theory and research and the effective implementation of the new recommendations in the everyday life of infant schools.