Giovanni Modugno’s “Paupers’ Wardrobe”: a Service Learning experience in an italian primary school of the late 1930s

Abstract

As part of his commitment to active and democratic education during Fascism, Giovanni Modugno (1880-1957) contributed to the popularization of several educational activities implemented in Puglia’s primary schools, inspired by Friedrich Förster’s pedagogy. He wrote about these activities in the magazines Scuola Italiana Moderna (Modern Italian School) and Supplemento pedagogico (Pedagogical Supplement). One such initiative, the “Paupers’ Wardrobe” was established by a group of all-female fifth-graders; under their teacher’s guidance, the girls collected and kept track of clothes to donate. This was experiential learning in a real-life context, as the pupils carried out research tasks aimed at building a solidarity welfare network and promoting assistance and care for those in need. Orphans, widows, disabled people, street children, the elderly, the unemployed, and the seriously ill benefited from this initiative, which in turn enabled students to discover, as with today's service learning, the discipline-specific knowledge intrinsic to free and responsible actions.