“A port in every storm, a refuge from every danger, a fount for every thirst of childhood, ill-favoured by fortune”: the image of infant schools as mediated by the journal Pro Infantia

Abstract

The interpretive category of “school memories” has recently come to prominence within international historiography and is also gaining ground within Italian historical-educational research. Education journals are a source that can contribute significantly to the re-evoking of a shared school past. This study follows this line of inquiry by examining the contents of the journal Pro Infantia from its foundation in 1913 up to the period following World War I. Focusing on articles written by the journal’s editors and contributors as well as on personal accounts submitted by subscribers, it highlights elements of both continuity and discontinuity between infant school as it was concretely experienced and infant school as it was represented in the individual, collective, and public imagination. It also brings to light discrepancies – at times substantial ones – between contemporary educational theory and ministerial directives versus everyday teaching, and material practices in infant schools.