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The paper discusses the use of music in education in a general pedagogical perspective. The Author begins with a very famous quotation from Plato’s Protagora about the effect of music on the harmonious development of young children’s attitudes and habits, and on shaping their minds. In the Author’s opinion, the loss of consideration of music teaching in school is nowadays due to its representation (in both parents’, teachers’ and pupils’ minds) as “a play”, or as a specific profession, ignoring its essential function of intellectual and emotional balance; an achievement that young people could obtain through musical education. Besides, music is also a part of our cultural heritage that creates and consolidates social bonds. Lastly the paper deals with some methodological aspects and problems that teachers face in concrete didactic school setting.

Several essays have been dealt with the life and suicide of Italia Donati, the young primary schoolteacher whose death moved and shocked Italian public opinion in 1886. Nevertheless, no contribution analyzed why the episode exerted such a remarkable influence on Italian society. This paper is going to examine how the report the «Corriere della Sera» published on her death described characters involved and circumstances. Letters written by the newspapers’ readers and the following literature about the topic will be taken also into account for examinate how the investigative report influenced schoolteachers’ mentality on a mid-term basis.

This paper analyses the laws, rules and education principles which regulated and ensured the establishment of courses to qualify as a gymnastics teacher in Italy in the second half of the 19th century. The aim of the research is to point out teaching and learning approaches applied in teachers’ schools (so-called Scuole Magistrali) and special qualifying courses (i.e. Corsi autunnali), in order to provide a better understanding of teacher professionalism. Findings regarding Italian teacher training are compared with those collected in other European states in order to highlight the extent to which teacher education programs developed according to similar paths when gymnastics became a compulsory subject in European schools.

In this paper, Remo Ceserani reflects upon the notions of canon and anthology in relation to the institutions behind them. After a short premise in which the traditional role of Church and school in the process of canonization is taken into account, the discussion moves to the present age, focusing on the idea of canon that lies at the basis of both North-American and Italian anthologies. In the former case, Ceserani highlights how the emergence of world literature has led to revise the structure of anthologies; in the latter case, the author argues that the canon mutuated from the work of Francesco De Sanctis still functions as the main source for many anthologies. He then concludes by stating that a thematical approach could constitute an alternative structuring criterion for a scholastic anthology.

One of the long-term goals of literary education in secondary school should be the training of assiduous, capable and independent young readers. But, in reality, in Italian institutions reading education suffers from inadequate attention and ineffective and obsolete routines. This paper aims to highlight contradictions in scholastic rhetoric, both institutional and didactic, that cause the impressive amount of non-readers among young Italians: ministerial directives that lack in regulatory, theoretical, and methodological frameworks (the new Indicazioni Nazionali), but that sometimes exceed in requiring specific contents (the 'untouchable' Promessi sposi, a poetry-oriented canon); the structural conditions of the pedagogical apparatus (Massa 1987) that clash against the kind of fruition required from a novel, giving rise to common practices such as anthological fragmentation and an emphasis on text analysis and test-oriented didactics, rather than focusing on developing real and efficient reading skills. Finally, examples of didactic practices will be given, with the purpose of conciliating the necessary methodological accuracy and the acquisition of reading skills with a revaluation of reading pleasure and the experiential and essential value that it can and should have for every adolescent.

Most countries in the industrialized world have recently undergone or are currently undergoing processes of reform of their school systems: the state-centered model which ruled education in the 20th century seems to have been replaced by a different pattern, one that conceives of schools as autonomous, self-administered centers of learning. In Italy, however, the shift to a system focussed on effectiveness, research and accountability appears to be more difficult than elsewhere, due to the peculiar features of the Italian cultural and political tradition. This paper sketches a brief history of school reforms in Italy, from the Fascist regime to the present day: by thus doing, it aims at providing some background information for the current debate on school reform, while attempting to shed some light on the critical issues of the day.