In Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century, forty years after the Unification, several factors pointed to a pressing need for reform: the evident deficiencies in secondary school teaching; the changed social and historical context; the influence of reform movements in other European countries – especially Felix Klein's movement in Germany and Gaston Darboux’s in France –; the increasingly active participation of teachers in the political issues of education; and, finally, the remarkable increase in the number of pupils enrolled in secondary schools (from 18,231 to 94,572 between 1861 and 1901). To address this situation, in 1905 Minister Leonardo Bianchi appointed a Royal Commission for the reform of the secondary school system. Despite the difficulties and conflicts within the board itself, in February 1908 the Commission presented a draft law proposing, on the one hand, a professional technical school with three-year courses enabling entry to the technical institutes, and, on the other hand, a three-year course for the scuola media unica (lower secondary school, or middle school, common to all schools), excluding Latin as a subject, which would grant students access to the three different kinds of upper secondary school: liceo classico (with Latin and Greek), liceo scientifico (with two modern languages and a broader science syllabus), and liceo moderno (with Latin and two modern languages). The syllabi for mathematics, and the instructions on teaching method, original and panoramic in their approach, were written by Giovanni Vailati (1863-1909), a mathematician with a diversity of interests who belonged to the school of Giuseppe Peano. In may paper, I concentrate on the following points: Vailati’s criticisms of the schools of the time, the pedagogical and methodological assumptions that he starts from in formulating his project for reform, his concrete proposals for a renovation of the teaching of mathematics, the criticisms of his proposals, and the results effectively achieved.
Humanitas scientifica e democratizzazione del sapere.Vailati e il progetto di riforma dell'insegnamento della matematica.
GIACARDI, Livia Maria
2010-01-01
Abstract
In Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century, forty years after the Unification, several factors pointed to a pressing need for reform: the evident deficiencies in secondary school teaching; the changed social and historical context; the influence of reform movements in other European countries – especially Felix Klein's movement in Germany and Gaston Darboux’s in France –; the increasingly active participation of teachers in the political issues of education; and, finally, the remarkable increase in the number of pupils enrolled in secondary schools (from 18,231 to 94,572 between 1861 and 1901). To address this situation, in 1905 Minister Leonardo Bianchi appointed a Royal Commission for the reform of the secondary school system. Despite the difficulties and conflicts within the board itself, in February 1908 the Commission presented a draft law proposing, on the one hand, a professional technical school with three-year courses enabling entry to the technical institutes, and, on the other hand, a three-year course for the scuola media unica (lower secondary school, or middle school, common to all schools), excluding Latin as a subject, which would grant students access to the three different kinds of upper secondary school: liceo classico (with Latin and Greek), liceo scientifico (with two modern languages and a broader science syllabus), and liceo moderno (with Latin and two modern languages). The syllabi for mathematics, and the instructions on teaching method, original and panoramic in their approach, were written by Giovanni Vailati (1863-1909), a mathematician with a diversity of interests who belonged to the school of Giuseppe Peano. In may paper, I concentrate on the following points: Vailati’s criticisms of the schools of the time, the pedagogical and methodological assumptions that he starts from in formulating his project for reform, his concrete proposals for a renovation of the teaching of mathematics, the criticisms of his proposals, and the results effectively achieved.
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