Papers by Simonetta Polenghi
Historia scholastica
Fascism used different tools and media to educate Italians to be good Fascists, and to present th... more Fascism used different tools and media to educate Italians to be good Fascists, and to present the myth of the "new man". This myth had a number of different nuances during the twenty years of the regime. The strong educational aim of Fascism pervaded the entire life of Italians and assigned great importance to the education of children and young people. Schools were therefore given a significant role in this process, which grew in intensity during the thirties, with the Empire and the conquest of Ethiopia. School textbooks, with their images, are relevant sources for examining this process. Thanks to the extensive work in revising school textbooks undertaken by the Commission, which had been established by the minister Giovanni Gentile in 1923 and was chaired by Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, only the best books, which included the notion of progressive education and a modern idea of the child, could be published. The search for "the Fascist book" then began, but it was only in 1930 that the State Fascist textbooks replaced by law the previous ones. Nonetheless, an examination of the text and images of various State textbooks reveals a complex mix of traditional educational messages, centred around the Catholic faith, patriotic values and il Duce's exaltation. It has been noted that the "new man" was initially an anti--liberal and subsequently a "mass-man" [uomo-massa], with no individual identity. Examination of the State textbooks, however, also reveals messages, which were sometimes contradictory (Christian peace and Fascist war, for example). The importance of the family, constantly underlined, undermined the "mass-man" messages. Traditional rural values coexisted with the spirit of modernization. This article shows how some Fascist educational messages were coherent with traditional ones, and were therefore probably more easily accepted, whereas others were typically Fascist; and how the image of the new child changed.
Proceedings
Object of reflection from different disciplines, from philosophy to psychology, to aesthetics, to... more Object of reflection from different disciplines, from philosophy to psychology, to aesthetics, to semiotics, to the history of art, the image, both natural and artificial and artistic, is at the center of the experiences and daily experiences of a number more and more people. In the society of visual communication, subjects prefer to see and 'read' their experiences through images, even when, unfortunately, they are not suitable for transmitting educational and training messages. This visual centrality in lifestyles and learning stimulates pedagogy to ask questions about the reflexes and the implications on growing subjects. The use of images inevitably raises questions about the processes of elaboration, the relationship between verbal texts and visual texts, the implications with the processes of signification. Therefore the need to elaborate a "grammar" of visual texts is outlined [1], to deal with the complexity of the process of reading the image, with reference to the tools offered by semiotics and visual rhetoric, we think, for example, of the significant contribution by Umberto Eco's interpretive semiotics with regard to the enhancement of the function of images in production and decoding of meanings [2]. The recent attention then by the field of studies indicated as "visual studies" [3] opens up further and interesting fronts of pedagogical research with regard to the implications between image and problems of representation, between image and subjectivity formation, in relation also to the implications that the image has on the level of corporeity, of the quantitative predominance of the visual in cultural forms contemporary, along with the possibility of tracing the gnoseological potentialities of the image [4] in parallel and beyond the linguistic modalities. On the basis of these brief considerations, the congress stands out for its interdisciplinary approach. To you all, my best wishes for a good job and my best regards.
Paedagogica Historica
At the end of the 19th century, children were increasingly seen as measurable and classifiable ob... more At the end of the 19th century, children were increasingly seen as measurable and classifiable objects of study on which a scientific approach to education could be based. Two factors fed into the development of this approach: confidence in scientific methods and the expansion of national education systems. Thus, there emerged a confluence of power and science that led to the measurement and classification of children in the name of an efficiently organized social system. This merging of reason, science and efficiency in the goal of classifying children came at a time when the old unitary school system was being declared outdated and coherent teaching units through which scientific methods of learning could be applied were being developed.
Paedagogica Historica
In the early decades of the twentieth century the question of mental disabilities was widely disc... more In the early decades of the twentieth century the question of mental disabilities was widely discussed in Italy, while the first special schools for the intellectually impaired were set up. An important role was played by the Franciscan friar Agostino Gemelli (1878–1959), a physician, renowned psychologist, and founder in 1921 of the Catholic University of Milan. Gemelli promoted relevant psychological research on intellectual disabilities, based on empirical and measurable processes. He considered only scientific studies necessary to promote appropriate educational actions. Gemelli and his collaborators developed from a biological point of view the classification elaborated by the famous psychologist and psychiatrist Sante De Sanctis (1862–1935). Moreover, in 1926 Gemelli established the School for special teachers and assistants for disabled children in the Catholic University of Milan, with the aim of making the “special” teachers confident with medical, psychological and pedagogical issues. This institution did not have a “Catholic colour”: indeed, Gemelli called professors of great fame to teach in his School, without concern for their ideological thoughts. All his work was characterised by the cooperation between science and religion: the experimental method did not contrast with Catholic values. This paper is based on unpublished documents from different archives.
Pedagógiatörténeti Szemle
Die Thun-Hohenstein'schen Universitätsreformen 1849–1860, 2017
After a general overview on the studies devoted to the history of special education, the author a... more After a general overview on the studies devoted to the history of special education, the author analyze the texts gathered in the book entitled "L'educazione dei sordomuti nell'Italia dell'800. istruzioni, metodi, proposte formative" (SEI, 2008), edited by Roberto Sani.
The recent books of Luigiaurelio Pomante on the University of Macerata offer an important contrib... more The recent books of Luigiaurelio Pomante on the University of Macerata offer an important contribution for identifying the role of minor universities in Italy. On the basis of a careful analysis of recently published books, the author examines the evolution of the Italian university system between the nineteenth and twentieth century with special reference to the minor universities.
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Papers by Simonetta Polenghi