The “Convitti scuola della Rinascita”(the Boarding Schools of Rebirth) an innovative pedagogical laboratory during Italian post-war era (1945-1955)

At the end of World War II, after twenty years of fascism, the Italian education system was in crisis. The conflict, aerial bombing and partisan offensives caused many problems for the civil population. Some anti-fascist intellectuals gave rise to the interesting pedagogical experiment: the “Convitti scuola della Rinascita” (Boarding School of Rebirth). These institutions addressed themselves to adult learners, mainly partisans, who had been engaged in the conflict and now wanted to come back to school to improve their opportunities and development in a post-war environment. The background, against which these innovative schools evolved, retained the traces of war: the debris littering the streets, public buildings destroyed, the hunger and poverty of the population was palpable. The absence of a really new concept of education, after years of dictatorship, impinged on the material rebuilding. The ruling class fluctuated between pedagogical beliefs inspired on the one hand by the restoration of the liberal secular education and, more often, the Catholic tradition which pre-dated Fascism and on the other hand by the adherence to new principles from American educational reformers – such as John Dewey and Carleton Washburne. The post-war period was full of hope but also rife with tension. After the collapse of fascist propaganda, populism and ideological controversies persisted most of all between the new political forces: Christian Democrat Party (DC) and Italian Communist Party (PCI). The aim of my paper is first of all to reconstruct, in the general framework of relationships between education and war, the birth of “Convitti”, in its qualitative and quantitative aspects. Then I would like to emphasize the arduous journey in search of a curriculum suited to the ethical and political reconstruction of adult students, outside the traditional models. I would also like to explore the huge dilemmas that affected both the ruling classes and the teachers called to redefine their role in a State that was ushering in democracy. I want to highlight the ideological international ties and the influences of the protagonists. Lastly, I would discuss the economic and mainly political difficulties experienced by the founders, who were forced to deal with the constraints of the ministry of post-war reconstruction. My sources will include the archives of Movement of Liberation and two, as yet unpublished, direct testimonies: the first one made orally by Angelo Peroni (1993) about the “Convitto” of Milan and the second represents the final account by Mario Alighiero Manacorda, a distinguished scholar in Marxist education, who founded the “Convitto” of Rome and died in February 2013 . The conclusion of my paper will be the interpretation of the failure of “Convitti Rinascita” that related not only to the defeat of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in the years of the Cold War, but also the internal difficulties in left wing movements