Progetto PRIN. «School Memories between Social Perception and Collective Representation: Italy (1861-2001)»

The research project focuses on “school memory”, understood as an individual, collective and public practice of re-evoking a shared school past. “School memory” is an interpretive category recently introduced as part of international historiographical reflection and it has been the subject of interesting studies in the field of the history of education in some Latin-American countries as well as in the English-speaking world, although it is still not widely used in Italy. Based on new types of sources and on a methodological approach requiring an interdisciplinary viewpoint, the aim here is to explore models of school, teaching, learning and education that emerge from individual memories, as well as the way in which they have been represented – over the last two centuries – by the world of information and communication and by the culture industry. Nevertheless, the aim is to look at which memory of school and teaching has been developed as part of the official representation and public commemorations promoted by local and national institutions, based on a precise politics of memory aimed to acquire consent and to boost the idea of belonging to a specific community (“public use of the past”). From this viewpoint, this research aims to set out the development of collective perception of the role and purpose of education between 1861 and 2001, as well as to highlight the changes found – within the same timeframe – in the way teachers’ social status and their public function in schools of all levels were perceived. In fact, studying the way in which schools and education have been collectively and symbolically represented over time will not only highlight the cultural dimension of these historical phenomena, but also help to define the origin of some constraints still weighing upon the public image of school, and finally to provide all stakeholders in public education with a greater awareness of their role. For this reason – and with the aim to foster the University’s impact on society, from the perspective of “public engagement” – this project this project does not aim solely to generate new scientific knowledge within the educational and historic sphere, but also to socialise the main results of this research through the creation of a website dedicated to the memory of school, the promotion of specific initiatives to disseminate history over a wider range (“public history”) and to design educational courses for schools of all levels.