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In 2017, the primary school Fortuzzi located in Bologna, reached its first 100 years of age. It was actually inaugurated on July 22, 1917 and today hosts two sections of full-time primary school. As part of the initiatives to celebrate the centenary, a public and participatory research has been carried out. The objective was not limited to the reconstruction of the most significant events that accompanied the existence of the school and that of the people who both taught and learned inside this facility. At the same time we have always wanted to communicate to the citizenship and the subjects that constituted the actual school (pupils, students and parents) the importance of the institution in the city context and the changing character that it had taken over time.The purpose of this essay was to provide a report of the characteristics of this experimental research formula, illustrating its methods and results, reflecting both its potential and its limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long process that gradually gave rise to an Italian national sentiment also relied much on a sort of complementary feeling that was essential in identifying and stigmatizing anyone who was not part of the national community. As nationalism evolved in the period between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the identification and stigmatization of both foreigner and enemy, went hand in hand with the invention and attribution of an idealised and glorified national past. These processes of stigmatization actually contributed to reaffirm, 'from the outside', the boundaries of a nation that was still under construction; nevertheless, 'from the inside', they helped to encourage and reinforce the inner bonds of national identity through contrast. This essay deals with two particular issues regarding the role played by school curricula in the complex and indirect process of forming Italian citizens and national identity through contrast, in the period between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first part deals with the diffusion of the idea that the Italian colonisers were conquerors who «civilised» «barbaric and inferior» populations, while the second focuses on the notion of a national «racial» belonging to a «white» or Western community based on hereditary somatic and psychic traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article concerns the exhibition that was opened on October 2012 in Modena at the Lyceum Sigonio. Curated by Chiara Guidelli and put together by students in their last year under the direction of Italian and History teachers, with the collaboration of ANMIG (the Italian association of war disabled and invalids), the exhibition focused on daily life in the school Regina Elena, a teacher training institute, on the eve of the Second World War i.e. in the years 1938-1949. The article discusses: the scientific criteria, both historical and educational, underlying the exhibition; the selection of iconographic and documentary sources; the educational and learning issues linked with the curriculum; and finally the museographic issues concerning the organisation and the mounting of historical material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even lacking - if compared with other European countries - any tradition and policy of colonial expansion, nevertheless fascist Italy had her own, brief but violent, 'colonialist season' that played an important role not only on a cultural level but also influenced domestic policies. This was especially the case when it came to the complex task of creating a national identity and when nationalising the masses, all of which took place between the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, and which also saw the involvement of the military forces and education system. The essay provides an attentive and reasoned overview the state of the historiographical research on a wider context and then focuses on the characteristics of the Italian colonisation policy, which was committed to establishing on the notion of subjection/subordination of 'the others' - strongly promoted through the political propaganda and school instruction as well - a powerful image of the nation: an issue that was particularly crucial for a newly-founded country like Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]