The single middle school (1962) and the political-pedagogical debate on teacher training

Abstract

The 1962 law that established the single middle school is considered, almost unanimously, as one of the most important post-World War II school reforms, despite its legislative process has been uneven and tiring and its political-cultural compromises are not always a success. It has contributed, though with difficulties and contradictions, to changing the identity of the Italian school, trying to make the school more authentically democratic and fighting that class selection that affected the most socially and culturally deprived classes. This contribution aims at analyzying the pedagogical debate in those years on the subject of teacher training, an issue that was widely debated among the various pedagogical currents and, moreover, deemed decisive for the success of the reform. Indeed, the issue was the training a new figure of middle school teacher, endowed with a serious pedagogical and didactic preparation, as well as a democratic mentality and a disposition to community work.