Gianfranco Bandini

Les rapports entre adultes et enfants dans les décisions pénales des tribunaux italiens (1930–2010)

Children have long been the objects and not the subject of legal rights. Social and political evolution has led to a progressive recognition of a series of rights, which have unfortunately often continued to exist only on paper. The gap between legal norms and practice was visible throughout the twentieth century and one of the focal points was the use of violence in the education of children. In Italy the so-called jus corrigendi, written into law during the Fascist period, continued to have an influence for a long time, and to feed a doctrinal and jurisprudential debate long after the Republican Constitution. This complex relationship among laws, social practices and pedagogic ideas has not been modified in a linear manner over time, but does show some important discontinuities: in particular in the 1970s (during and after the student revolts) and at the beginning of the 1990s (with the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child). A good place to see the situation is in the different weight given to factors presented before and taken into consideration in the penal judgments of Italian courts from the end of the Second World War up to today. Court sentences are historical sources of special interest and utility, above all because they represent points of mediation of case law with the development of the ‘social conscience’. They place before our eyes many aspects of the relationships between adults and children (especially between parents and children), relationships often marked by abuse and violence. In the same way they illustrate the different ways (and sometimes there is a great contrast) in which the same identical situations have been interpreted and judged in courts over time. The discovery of the child thus makes its path between the authoritarianism of tradition and progressive impulses. In Italy at the end of the twentieth century the move to a new relationship between adults and children, characterised by affection and empathy, was sanctioned by the courts and put into effect in society in the spheres of school education and work, although inside the family there was still resistance, with more and more significant court cases resulting than is commonly believed.

La Franc‐maçonnerie et le droit à l’instruction: de l’Unité italienne jusqu’au début du XXème siècle

On the morrow of Italy’s unification, the new state found itself having to confront a long series of severe and important problems. Certainly one of these was illiteracy. This phenomenon was measured in very worrisome percentages, especially in several regions of the South. The first years of government were used to build a unitary system of education instead of the various organisational forms that had prevailed in the several pre‐unification states. The problem of education of the masses, starting from the basic elements of literacy, was confronted especially by politicians and intellectuals who belonged to (or were close to) freemasonry. It is believed that almost all the ministers who followed one after the other in public education were masons and that, particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century, Italian freemasonry took on a stronger and stronger role within the state and in political and cultural life. The social question and the education question were recurrent themes in these streams of thought. They were expressed particularly in the work and writings of Francesco De Sanctis, Pasquale Villari, and Michele Coppino. It was specifically the latter who, during his many appointments as minister of public education, not only conducted intense organisational and cultural activity, but also succeeded in bringing about passage in 1877 of a law that decreed compulsory elementary education up to the age of nine (10 years after his first attempt). The parliamentary debate over compulsory education, in part inspired by legislation in other European countries (sometimes referring to America too), was very wide‐ranging and stormy. The positions being argued were in fact contradictory and irreconcilable: on one hand, it was held that compulsory education would be a useless imposition on families in the countryside that could not economically do without the labour of their children; on the other hand, it was held that only compulsory education would open the road to literacy to the people and would convince them of its real benefits. All this should be read within a historical context characterised by a hostile, problem‐ridden process of separation between State and Church and by a strong contrast between religious and secular positions. Both sides expressed themselves in fact in terms of absolute opposition. And that had a direct impact on all educational subjects. This article demonstrates the contribution of masonic thought and the importance of the compulsory education law, inspired by the principle of equal access to education. This law, thanks to education being free of charge and to the expanding presence of schools, formed a turning point (and a point of discontinuity) in Italian education, improving the condition of the population in a real way, and preparing for the industrial development of the beginning of the twentieth century.

Educational Memories and Public History: A Necessary Meeting

Historical research in the educational area has been enriched, especially since the turn of the century, by new forms of inquiry, particularly within the international community, through conferences, summer schools and other initiatives involving an increasing number of national research groups.