Ada Della Torre’s commitment to the democratization of teaching and educational institutions

Abstract

Ada Della Torre Ortona was a partisan and, in the postwar period, a writer and an honorary judge of the Juvenile Court of Turin, but above all she was a teacher. In my contribution, I intend to focus on her idea of schooling, the methodologies she adopted, the reflections she developed on both the pedagogical and political levels as well as on the major transformations she experienced on which she wrote articles for Il Giornale dei genitori. The highest point of her civic commitment in the field of education is represented by the trial she had to face in 1961 for having reported to the publishing house Le Monnier what she
described as a “veiled apology for fascism and Nazism” and the “omission of too many historical truths” found in a lower secondary school textbook published by that editorial group.