Italy

Full-Time Schooling: A Key to Cultural and Political Change

Fabio Pruneri

Who?

The image chosen for this project shows a Roman Catholic priest and some boys of different ages. The priest is Lorenzo Milani and the students are poor farmers who had been excluded and rejected by compulsory school because they were considered incapable.

Where?

This photograph was taken during a time when the priest was new to Barbiana, a tiny village in the Tuscan Apennines. There, Don Milani, who had been considered an uncomfortable priest, carried out an experiment that remained unique in Italian history.

When?

Between 1954 and 1967, Italian society and school suffered the repercussions of a rapid transformation. This process, full of contradictions, influenced the approach to elementary education, as the commitment to schooling for all emerged. This sudden economic development was not accompanied by fair distribution of welfare and social rights.

What?

Milani denounced the inequalities of a class-based educational system and he wrote the book Letter to a Teacher (Lettera a una professoressa) (1967), sharing his ideas and those of the pupils he taught through a collective writing piece. This text has had a great impact on the Italian schooling system. The accusations of students who had dropped out of the school underpinned the profound culture change of the Italian 1968 movement.

Why?

The Italian Constitution, which was approved in 1948 after the Second World War, with the consent of most anti-fascist parties, introduced an interesting programme of change. The republic, in fact, would guarantee access to higher standards of education, to all citizens, removing economic and social barriers which prevented the individual’s self-realisation. Article 3 of the Constitution reads: “All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law, without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinions, and personal, social conditions”. There are two more articles concerning school: number 33: “The Republic guarantees the freedom of the arts and sciences, which may be freely taught”, and 34: “Schools are open to everyone. Primary education, given for at least eight years, is compulsory and free of tuition. Capable and deserving pupils, including those lacking financial resources, have the right to attain the highest levels of education”.

From an ideological point of view, outdated perceptions of the role of the school persisted in a society that moved from constraints of dictatorship to democracy. Very important was the reform that instituted Italy’s comprehensive lower secondary school (Scuola media unica) (Law n. 1859, December 31st, 1962), as a starting point for the analysis of a new relation between school and culture.

Scuola media unica can be summarised as the challenge of putting into practice Italian comprehensive school reform bringing the whole curriculum of students together, from 11 to 14 years old. It could also be considered as a bottom-up process, because it was society (the world of work, local authorities, civil society and families) that transposed the instances of literacy emerging in the lower classes. The middle classes were certain that developing education for people traditionally excluded from higher education would help the wealth of the nation enormously, considering the economic boom and the easier access to consumer goods. The hopes of post-war investment in human capital as a key to progress intertwined with a process of expansion of training and school time.

Time management

Regarding the management of the timetable, the new comprehensive school designated at least 10 hours a week for the study of subsidiary and complementary activities, the frequency of which was optional and free (Law n. 1859, December 31st, 1962, Article 3). This law, on the one hand, further supported “normal students”, favouring them in the selection of subsequent school choices, while, on the other hand, it instituted Refresher Classes (Classi di aggiornamento) for students who needed special attention in order for them to benefit from attending classes (Article 11) and Differential Classes (Classi differenziali) for unsuitable or differently able pupils (Article 12). Both Refresher and Differential classes, which were intended for fewer than 15 pupils, would be handled by specialised teachers. A team of doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists and educators would assess which students to admit into special classes. Content and programmes of those classes would be different from the ones attended by “ordinary” students.

However, the so-called “school of all” was affected by a subtler discrimination. The special and refresher classes were in danger of becoming a ghetto of segregation for the weakest members of society. In a city like Turin special classes increased from 50 in 1962, to 500 only a decade later. They were attended by the children of a generation of emigration and urbanisation, made of unemployed immigrants moving from Southern Italy ready to work in heavy industry. These classes spread tumultuously between the 1960s and 1970s, both in primary and lower secondary schools.

Letter to a Teacher denounced the scandal of the many children who failed or left school discouraged by the methods by which they were taught. The students of the radical school set in Barbiana, let people know the injustice resulting from a school that selects the best and forgets the “worst”. ‘You fail us – a pupil of the remote small mountain village north of Florence, writes – right out into the fields and factories and there you forget us’ (Milani and Scuola di Barbiana, 1967; Rossi and Cole, 1969, p. 6). This severe criticism underlines the limits of the compulsory school that produced class differences, camouflaged under the word “merit” and “excellence”. According to Milani, who was the ghost writer of the Letter, success in school was the result of privileges at home. Wealthy people had better learning opportunities, especially things such as extracurricular activities offered by their parents. Paradoxically, they received more attention from teachers and, therefore, eventually succeeded.

To cope with the hard social and cultural selection made by state schools, Milani suggested three basic reforms: ‘1) Do not fail students. 2) Give full-time schooling to children who seem stupid. 3) Give a purpose to the lazy’ (Rossi and Cole, 1969, p. 46).

Milani believed in the potential use of after-school hours (Doposcuola) for those who need or want extra work. The well-to-do can indeed afford to pay private tutors, in poorer family’s free time did not exist or was wasted, so that the children were left stranded. ‘The old intermediate school sharpened class distinctions chiefly through its timetable and its terms (short hours of schooling and long holidays). This has not changed in the new system. It remains a school cut to measure for the rich. For people who can get their culture at home and are going to school just in order to collect diplomas’ (Rossi and Cole, 1969, p. 20).

For this reason, as Milani’s pupils stated: ‘There was no break [in Barbiana]. Not even Sunday was a holiday’ (Rossi and Cole, 1969, p. 8 – “[…] you are such paltry educators, offering 185 days of holiday against 180 of school. And four hours at school against twelve hours out’, Ibid., p. 3).

Law 820 of September 24th, 1971 – The Italian government recognised, through Law 820 of September 24th, 1971, additional activities and full-time in elementary school, a few years after the publication of Letter to a teacher. The reform was the legislative recognition of an “enriched” time that was used to meet social demand, which was rising sharply due to multiple factors: employment, education and ethics. On the occupational side, the law recognised the expansion of women’s employment. On the side of teaching, the government legitimised the new strong innovative drive; on equity it recognised that greater investment in time school would produce less differentiation between rich and poor.

Supplementary activities and special subjects in elementary school were intended to enrich the content of teaching, and the final goal was the establishment of full-time schooling.

Extra hours, performed in addition to those of the normal school hours, were assigned to regular primary school teachers, who were hired to carry out this role as long as the supplementary activities equated to at least 25 hours. Additional activities were not considered appendages, as in the past, but as part of a unique educational project. One way of improving the quality of learning, was to set up state-run full-time schooling from scratch, adding alternative subjects such as music, art, theatre and animation, thus breaking the quiet life of the “morning” school still linked to the official curriculum. Tempo pieno was an achievement that changed the core, and “full time schools” introduced schools where the children would stay in for lunch and normally leave at 4.30 pm. These were spread enormously, primarily in the areas of central and northern Italy, with a coverage of almost all the territory in areas like Turin, Bologna and Milan.

During the long school day, children learned to adopt the so-called “method of research”. They printed textbooks alternative to the national one using the mimeograph. Lunch, school trips, and activities in the open were pieces of a single, large educational project. The full-time also constituted an opportunity for the full integration of disabled persons with the consequent closure of the special classes. “Classroom”, which had been understood as an exclusive property of a single teacher, was opened at intersections with other classes in the school and to a variety of teachers.

In conclusion, by extending the hours of attendance, schools aimed to help pupils face both a new complex culture (new subjects, forms of expression, languages) and changing needs of families.

Word: Full-time schooling

Number: 1967