Educating the “New Man” in Italian Schools during the Fascist Era. Children’s Education through Traditional and Totalitarian Models in Images and Texts of Schoolbooks

Abstract

present the of the “new man”. This of different nuances The educational of and people. this Empire and conquest of Ethiopia. School textbooks, with their are for this process. extensive school textbooks the best books, which the notion of progressive education and a modern idea of the child, published. The for “the Fascist book” but it was in 1930 that the State Fascist textbooks replaced by law the previous ones. Nonetheless, an examination of the text and images of various State textbooks reveals a complex mix of traditional educational messages, centred around the Catholic faith, patriotic values and il Duce’s exaltation. It has noted that the “new man” was initially an and subsequently a “mass-man” [uomo-massa], with no individual identity. Examination of the State textbooks, also reveals messages, which were sometimes (Christian and for The of the family, underlined, the Traditional rural traditional ones, and were therefore probably more easily accepted, whereas others were typically Fascist; and how the image of the new child changed.