Education and the metamorphoses of citizenship in contemporary Italy

This volume, which collects a series of essays regarding the topics of civic education and national identity, aims at highlighting the ways and modalities through which the diverse conceptions and ideologies of the nation, which marked twentieth century Italy, were transmitted to the new generations through the school and extra-school pathways, and ended up with feeding the individual and collective imagery of the people.
As regards the school, the privileged observatory chosen for such an inquiry is constituted by the teaching of history in primary and secondary schools and the related historical manuals, given the crucial role which – during the twentieth century – the school played in the civic-political formation and the promotion of the national ideals among the new generations, as well as the unquestionable centrality with which, from this viewpoint, the teaching of history was vested.
In the effort to adequately account for the metamorphoses of citizenshipin the course of the nineteenth century and, more in general, the different alternations of the national identity issue, with the consequent projects of ethical-civic and political education, the volume moreover dwells on some educational experiences which were outside of the traditional school pathways, and in particular the unique and extraordinary experience of «Il Giornalino della Domenica» (1906-11,1918-20), the journal which was founded by the journalist and writer for children Luigi Bertelli, better known under the pseudonym Vamba.

Anna Ascenzi (Macerata 1964) is full Professor of General and Social Pedagogy at the Faculty of Education of the University of Macerata,where she is currently Head of Department of Education. She has published several books and many contributions on the history of disciplinary didactics and textbooks, as well as on the literature for children and youth between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is member of the International Scientific Board of the journal «History of Education & Children's Literature».