Towards a history of special education in Italy: schools for the deaf-mute from the Napoleonic era to the Gentile Reforms

Overlooked by the historiographical-pedagogical research – and victim of a cultural prejudice, which considered it a minor field of education – the history of special education in Italy, and in particular the education for deaf-mutes, is here considered from its very beginning in the pre-unification years of the 1800’s. The essay reconstructs the history of the first Italian institutes for deaf-mutes, in nearly all cases promoted by religious orders such as Piarists, Somaschi and Daughters of Charity of Vincenzo de’ Paoli together with many other religious congregations. Based on the French model by the Abbot Charles-Michel de l’Épée, these private religious institutes were in fact in line with the larger social, welfare and educational work of the Church for the poor and abandoned youth. After the pedagogical reflections on teaching methods made by Severino Fabriani, Tommaso Pendola, Don Giulio Tarra and others, the first foundations were laid for the education of deaf-mutes as a complete science, but some existing problems were underlined as well. The Unified State inherited a difficult and fragmented situation, with regards to the curriculum and teaching methods, the special schools’ status, the disparity between North and South-Italy. To these and other issues (i.e. the legal recognition of schools and teachers, the public financial support, the extension of the compulsory education to deaf-mutes), a first solution came with the Gentile Reform of 1923, which started in Italy a new historic phase in the education, and consequently in the special education of the deaf-mute.