Mathematics and Scientific humanitas in secondary teaching in Italy

The earliest legislation aimed at giving a comprehensive organisation to the Italian education system was the Casati law, from the name of the Minister for Education, Gabrio Casati, who drafted it. All legislation regarding education in Italy was based on this law until 1923, when Giovanni Gentile, a prominent figure among Italian Neo-Idealist philosophers, introduced the reform that brought important changes to the school system, while maintaining various of its key features. The attempt to make mathematics a major teaching subject in Italy and the subsequent predominance of humanistic culture are illustrated. The legislative measures concerning curricula and the debates which arose from them are the leading theme of this paper, but the role of the mathematicians involved in advanced research, the strategies they adopted, and their methodological approaches to the teaching of mathematics are also considered.