Schools in Italy and Democracy Education in the Aftermath of the Second Word War

The starting point is the larger historiographical debate, which has recently arisen concerning issues such as democracy education and the construction of mass-agreement by the democratic regimes, that were established in Italy and other Western Europe countries, in the aftermath of the Second World War. The A. examines the features and the limits of the history of democracy and citizenship education in the Italian school system, inspired by those democratic values which gained force in the period between the fall of the Fascist regime and the war of liberation from the Nazi-Fascism (1943), up to the late fifties of the XX century – when the democratic Republic system was established and consolidated by the ratifying of the Constitution in 1948. A strong debate arose about the process of democratization in the country, and about the new generations’ education in democratic ideals, which were promoted by the anti-Fascist policy towards the end of the Second World War. A new light is thrown on the Sub-Committee for Education of the Allied Military Government, directed by the American pedagogists Carl Washburn, which played a pre-eminent role in this process. The A. examines the proposals about democracy education made by the Constituent Assembly responsible for writing the Constitution, and also the global project of democratic citizenship education, planned by the Minister of Education Guido Gonella (1946-1951) inside his proposal of the Italian school system reform. Even though his project, presented in 1951 to the Parliament, was not approved, at the end of the 50’s the new Minister of Education Aldo Moro (1958) finally supported the introduction of “civic education” in the Italian school.