Textbooks for Primary Schools

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As well-known, books for primary schools had to pass through a complex process that, from the work of the Central Commission for the examination of textbooks, led to the introduction of the State single textbook (Testo unico di Stato), which had important effects not only at a political-ideological and cultural level, but also on the plane of the re-definition of the traditional structures for production and distribution of textbooks.

The Lombardo Radice Central Commission (1923)
With the R.D. 11 marzo 1923 it was issued that textbooks for primary schools should be examined by regional commissions and approved by the related Directors of education (Provveditori agli studi). Again, a transitory Central Commission – nominated by the Ministry of Education – would have, temporarily, approved the textbooks’ lists for the school years 1923-24 and 1924-25.

This Commission installed itself in the weeks follosing the R.D., and was presided over by the General Director of primary education Giuseppe Lombardo Radice; it was made of teachers, intellectuals and ministerial officers, and it worked full time, going through its tasks 14 months later. The members examined at the beginning the textbooks so-called “complementary” and the “sussidiari” (manuals of history and geography, grammar, arithmetic, bookkeeping, various notions and so on), and then the reading books.

In June 1923 it came out the first partial report, concerning the history and geography manuals, written by Giuseppe Prezzolini and it included the list of approved and/or rejected books (cfr. Ascenzi-Sani 2005, pp. 79-150). Other reports followed, about arithmetic and bookkeeping manuals – written by Michele Cipolla (cfr. Ascenzi-Sani 2005, pp. 151-161); about religion texts, made by a specific sub-commission led by Lombardo Radice (cfr. Ascenzi-Sani 2005, pp. 162-178); about textbooks aimed at the new provinces, i.e. those ones annexed after the war 1915-18: this report was signed by, among others, Maria Pezzè Pascolato, Giovanni Maver and Aurelio Palmieri (cfr. Ascenzi-Sani 2005, pp. 179-211); about “sussidiari”, by Lorenzo Sferra Carini (cfr. Ascenzi-Sani 2005, pp. 212-269); about reading books, by Maria Pezzè Pascolato (cfr. Ascenzi-Sani 2005, pp. 270-307); and finally, about texts of “various notions”, natural sciences, grammar, hygiene and home economics (cfr. Ascenzi-Sani 2005, pp. 308-358). In September 1924, the Central Commission of Giuseppe Lombardo Radice presented the final report, which was published in May of the following year (1925) (Ascenzi – Sani 2005 , pp. 359-380).

The Lombardo Radice Commission – which was charged with the examination of a large and varied series of textbooks, including texts which had firstly been published in the last decades of the nineteenth century and frequently reissued, as well as texts dating back to the Giolitti period or to the first post-war period – worked with the aim of imposing a new typology of textbooks, which were able to reflect the didactical and pedagogical trends which underlie the Gentile Reform. This approach explains the attention which was paid by the commission’s members not only to the contents and educational models transmitted by textbooks, but also to the linguistic register adopted, to the typographical design and finally to the presence of pictures in the text. From these assumptions, the Lombardo Radice Commission worked rigorously, taking into account of any incongruence or lack which texts presented from a didactical, educational and contents viewpoint.

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