L’educazione nazionale tra ieri e oggi: uno sguardo ai manuali di storia

(National Education Yesterday and Today: A Look at History Textbooks)

Abstract

This essay retraces, through an analysis of school books relating to the teaching of history, the evolution in Italy of the concept of national education from the Italian unification to our contemporary period. More specifically, it identifies three specific variations that correspond to three models of citizen: 1) the Italian individual in the second half of the nineteenth century; 2) the new individual in the Fascist period, who was a synthesis and natural completion of the tradition of the Risorgimento; and 3) the republican individual, an emblem of the democratic spirit and ideals of the second part of the twentieth century.