State, society and mobilization in Europe during the First World War: War, ‘national education’ and the Italian primary school, 1915–1918

The historical context The question of the role played by Italian primary schools and their teachers in the mobilization of Italian society during the Great War involves two important contextual questions. The first is that of the relationship between the war and fascism and hence of the war's place in longer-term Italian history, a question that has been the subject of lively historical debate (continuity versus rupture, turning-point versus acceleration, etc.). Certainly, the fact that wartime mobilization was quickly followed by the fascist takeover of the Italian political system cannot be ignored, though neither can it be assumed that the connection is purely chronological. The wartime history of primary schooling has failed so far to arouse the interest of education historians. Yet poised mid-way between the institution of ‘primary education for the people’ by the liberal state in 1911 and the fascist proclamation of the ‘nationalization’ of primary schools in November 1923, the wartime experience of the school system poses with exceptional clarity the question of whether the war should be seen as rupture or continuity. The war undoubtedly provoked a crisis in the primary system. It drastically reduced financial resources, both as a result of the general tightening of wartime budgets and through the cancellation of the special funds earmarked for primary education in 1911. In 1917, only 1.2 per cent of the entire state budget was allocated to education and culture, the lowest level since Italian unification. Yet this material impoverishment occurred at just the moment when the school system was undergoing a major readjustment in the content of the curriculum and in teaching methods.