Session Information
Contribution
The paper will investigate whether (and if so how and to what degree) the open-air school "Umberto di Savoia"/"Casa del Sole" functioned as a "school" outside the actual "school domain" (in terms of both time and space). This particular school actually developed from a "parascolastic" initiative: a holiday camp (Penzo, 2003, 146). Since 1918 the most "indigent" children of Milan had been able to benefit from this camp organized according to a allegedly "natural method" including "hygienic gymnastics", sun and air baths, ablutions, foot baths, "serene" playing and singing, and a nor too excessive or too exciting nutrition (Albertini, 1921, p. 9). According to the self-discourse it was mostly due to one man, Dr. Luigi Veratti - a prominent hygienist and at the time town councillor for the department of health - that from the holiday camps an actual open-air school could be instigated, in spite of "considerable resistance" (Milano, 1931, p. 339). Originally, the intention was to build a day school that encompassed no less than twelve school pavilions and various other facilities (Folli, 1919, 1-4). However, by 1928 the project had been revised. Another ambition had taken shape: that of a boarding school, integrated into the day school, and destined for some 160 children that were said to be "particularly threatened", both physically and morally. It was considered the crowning glory of the "regenerative and preventive action" (Bimbi al sole, 2(8), 1931, 2) undertaken by the city of Milan, and the newly formed patronage presided by the school's "founder" Veratti, in particular. For all its sections (a nursery school, an elementary school, and a vocational school) the school adopted the regular programme designed in 1923 by the Gentilian philosopher and educational progressive Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, that was claimed to provide ample opportunity and freedom for the teacher to experiment with so-called "active" methods and to extend or limit the programme according to the individual needs of children (A. Fiori, 1931, 185). Given the school's target group of so-called "low human quality", the programme was in fact "adapted", that is: mainly "reduced" and "simplified" (Idem, 184; Regia, 1937, 26). In fact, the same "natural" method and rhythm (or: choreography of schooling) that dominated the holiday camp also reigned within the school. Whereas children who attended the boarding school stayed under permanent observation of the school within its domain, most children were transported from and to their homes by tramcars and (later) busses under the surveillance of purposefully appointed teachers. For these children the "school" seems to have begun and ended each day outside rather than inside its gates. The relevance and implications of this will be investigated by means of a short film about the open-air school that shows a child "preparing for" and "going to" school. This topic is one of the themes put forward during the last sessions of Network 17 at the ECER of 2006.The paper will use methodological tools from within the framework of new cultural histories of education, and engage among other things in discourse analysis. Both scientific works and original source material will be used, among which a short film about the open-air school.It is expected that the school indeed "functioned" in one way or another "outside" the school. Giulia Ciniselli, Una scuola nel parco, Milan, 2005. [DVD with shortfilm about the open-air school.] Dino Barra, 1925-2005. Casa del Sole. La città del infanzia a Milano, Milan, 2005. Pier Paola Penzo, Les villes italiennes et les écoles de plein air (1907-1931)/Italian Cities and Open-Air Schools. In A.-M. Châtelet, D. Lerch & J.-N. Luc (ed.), L'école de plein air. Une expérience pédagogique et architecturale dans l'Europe du xxe siècle / Open-air schools. An educational and architectural venture in twentieth-century Europe, Paris, 2003, pp. 129-147. or special network collection.
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