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Despite the prohibition on punishment in the form of emotional, psychological and physical abuse under the Fascist school regulations, it was common--particularly in Italian rural classrooms--for the purpose of managing and disciplining students. Sticks, "chickpeas" or "donkey desks" represent just a few examples of the methods frequently used by teachers to control unruly pupils. These punishments are often recalled by teachers and students in several published and unpublished discourses. This essay, by viewing such memoirs retrospectively, aims to provide a new understanding of the disciplinary practices carried out during 1920-1940 within Fascist Italian schools located in two different rural areas and to investigate the ways in which teachers and pupils look back on this particular aspect of their past.

History of English and Italian children's periodical press during the late 19th century can be an important means to understand National educational processes. According with the simultaneous development of the Italian and the English educational and school systems, the children's periodicals took an important part in the educational project and their aim was to educate the young readers through well-defined messages. In Italy the most important example was offered by the «Giornale per i Bambini» that not only educated the young Italian readers, but also offered various articles and pictures to entertain children in a pleasant way. To assure its success, this periodical took inspiration from European periodicals and, in particular, from the children's periodicals published in Great Britain «Boys of England» and «The Boy's Own Paper». It is, so, possible to discover the existence of an «English way» that inspired the «Giornale per i Bambini». [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The «Giornale per i bambini» ('The Children's Journal') was the most famous Italian children's magazine of its times, well know because of its contents (Pinocchio was published here for the fist time in 1881), but also because of the relevance of its editors in chief. From the first editor in chief, Ferdinando Martini, to Carlo Collodi and Emma Perodi it is widely agreed that the management of the periodical was undertaken by the most significant writers of that time. However, thanks to the correspondence archived in the Florence National Library, the true story about the «Giornale per i bambini» leadership seems to be very different: business and educational reasons gave birth to a publication in which the management was not really undertaken by Martini and Collodi, but also by unofficial editors in chiefs, that we call 'shadow editors in chief', such as Biagi and Perodi. From the inception of the journal, Martini's faithful collaborator Guido Biagi was the real soul of the new publication and influenced its contents and its editorial life, giving it a more international imprint. Biagi, however, headed the magazine for a short time and he was quickly replaced by Emma Perodi who became the real 'shadow editor in chief' of the «Giornale per i bambini» from the 1882 to the end of the publication in 1889 and who inspired all the editorial choices of the important children's periodical. Her work, however, was recognized later by the «Giornale» owner Ernesto Oblieght, which why it is only in 1887 that her name appeared in 1887 as official editor in chief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This presentation of the Italian «School and Children's Book Museum» in Turin (Museo della Scuola e del Libro per l'Infanzia, MUSLI) aims to shed light on the richness of the historical-educational collections gathered as well as on the complex activities on conservation, research and education that the Foundation Tancredi di Barolo has carried out in the field of history of school and of children's literature in Italy, over the last decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]