The Written School Memories of an Italian primary teacher between Fascism and democracy: an original case study

The following paper focuses on the original nature of Individual Written School Memories, shown by some commentaries published by the Italian primary teacher Marco Agosti in the Catholic teachers’ magazine «Supplemento pedagogico a Scuola Italiana Moderna» between
1933 and 1938, during the Fascist regime. They dealt with the main results of his educational experimentations in primary school, according to his idea of education as the full development of each human being. An analysis of Marco Agosti’s interventions reveals how they represented an original interpretation of the critica didattica, a new way of documenting research on didactics introduced by the Italian scholar Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, a partner of Giovanni Gentile in the preparation of the Italian School reform during Benito Mussolini’s first government. As recommended by Lombardo Radice to all Italian primary teachers, also Agosti produced day by day some personal notes, which helped him to reflect on his first achievements and to improve upon them on the basis of a pedagogical in-depth analysis. They became a particular form of Individual Written School Memories, «sedimented» during the time he taught at the State Primary School «Camillo Ugoni» in Brescia and conceived for «public use» with a double function – one academic and the other educational, thanks to their publication in a teachers’ magazine.