Secondary Mathematics Teaching from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Mid-Twentieth Century in Italy

This article presents the evolution of secondary-level mathematics teaching in Italy from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. In illustrating the most significant moments of this evolution, we have taken into account not only the legislation regarding schools and the reforms of public instruction both carried out and failed, but also of the debates over methodology, the contribution of mathematicians who were actively involved in research, teacher training, and textbooks which, particularly during the period of the Risorgimento, played an important role in defining teaching methods. Further, we have highlighted the relationship between how public education evolved and the important political changes in Italy during the period in question, including Napoleonic rule, the Risorgimento, World War I, and the rise of Fascism. The paper is divided into four sections: the first illustrates the important influence of French rule in Italy on education and covers the period from 1802 until 1848; the second discusses merits and defects of the Casati Law, the first law to provide an overall system for schools in the United Italy, and goes from 1859 to the early years of the twentieth century; the third concerns the period from 1909, the year of the first, unsuccessful project for global reform of secondary schools, up to the beginnings of Fascism; the fourth and final section deals with the consequences of the reform effected by Minister of Public Instruction Giovanni Gentile in 1923, and those of Fascist ideology for the teaching of scientific disciplines, and concludes with the programs proposed by the Allied Commission after the fall of Fascism, which marked the beginning of a new phase in Italian education.