One of the principal resources for the Fascist primary school student was the quaderno, or exercise copybook. Often sporting a cover illustrating an important moment in Italian history or Fascist policy or an idyllic scene from the national landscape, this slim notebook offered children, teachers, parents, and officials a formal collection of each student’s lessons and work. The words and images recorded in the quaderno do not necessarily indicate the student’s internalization of the book’s content, but they do provide a glimpse into how teachers and their pupils used class time and were asked to conceive of their collective identity.
An entry from one such source—displayed as part of a 1929 Florentine exhibition on Fascist education—helped its readers form an image of the ideal Fascist elementary classroom. Its third-grade author, from nearby Pistoia, began her account with a brief overview of the school, which was beautiful and clean. Her classroom, too, was airy, newly painted, and even had three windows. It was also small, with the foremost of the thirty student desks practically touching the chalkboard. Still, she explained, the room contained many beautiful things. On the walls “there is Jesus, to whom we pray; there is the flag we salute when we sing; there is the King and the Duce. To them we also salute and say ‘Eia! Eia! Alalà!’”1
The walls also bore a memorial to Italy’s fallen soldiers, in front of which students regularly laid flowers; and their teacher frequently added other pictures to the collection to aid her lessons. In addition to these images, the classroom was equipped with a thermometer, compass, gramophone, and small library, all of which were essential tools of modern pedagogy. Students were required to keep this classroom and these supplies clean, sweeping the floor and washing the desks almost every day, and to make sure they themselves were clean according to current hygienic standards. Outside the windows, students could see the schoolyard and its adjoining fields where they played when weather permitted. Our author concluded her sketch by underlining her joy at coming to school because she was so eager to learn.2
This portrait of a Tuscan elementary classroom illustrated the model integration of Fascist imagery and racial standards within the daily activities of the Italian primary school at the end of the 1920s. The Duce’s theories about the role of the state in regulating the health of the race were at the core of the Fascist experiment, and the classroom represented the most effective means with which to articulate and strengthen the ideal characteristics of the Italian race. A manual from 1930 informed teachers, “One does not encounter resistance in children. Curious about the world that surrounds them, desirous to know the life and actions of adults . . . with travel literature or history, with visits to monuments, with excursions, their love for the nation will grow until this instinctive sentiment is transformed into moral obligation.”3 Therefore, the author declared, “to develop feelings of nationalism must be the goal of a truly patriotic education.” As such, “every activity works for the gradual acquisition of spiritual strengths and practical abilities, in the end combining to form capable, proud, and daring Italians.”4
Reflecting the Fascist ambition to create a more totalitarian society of New Italians, the education ministry and its ancillary organizations officially maintained their support of the Gentilian principles of active and organic learning to promote lessons and activities that cultivated every aspect of the young Italians’ minds and bodies; such lessons were to mold strong and faithful members of the race. In the preface to another 1930 teaching manual, Cornelio Di Marzio proclaimed that “with physical education one prepares a soldier for the city, the urbe; with cultural education, it prepares a citizen for the fatherland.” More importantly, Di Marzio went on to explain that these two facets of education were intertwined and, together, created a “synthesis exalting faith in something that transcends all of us and forms the religion of our very lives.”5 The spiritual language of Di Marzio’s text underscored not only the fundamental role of religion in Italian education and society but more generally the holistic approach to Fascist pedagogy and racism. In support of this position, the administration continued to encourage teachers, as well as the leaders of Balilla and Piccole Italiane, to incorporate outdoor activities, visits to monuments, and field trips to exhibitions and museums into their regular programs. Furthermore, pedagogues stressed the importance of group activities, such as singing, sports, and camp life, as essential to the “re-education of the razza” by creating the sense of collective belonging that was deemed fundamental to the formation of ideal Fascists.6 These sentiments were essential components of the education of the disciplined soldiers and prolific mothers who would carry the race to its supposedly inevitable glory. In short, such an education would infuse children with the “virtues of the Latin razza”7 that were “indispensable part[s] of the improvement of the stirpe.”8
The totalitarian aims and institutional transformations of the Fascist state between 1929 and 1934 translated into curricular modifications for the racial education program. The state worked to Fascistize the concepts of nation, race, italianità, and physical health, particularly within the new state textbooks, by taking on references to Fascism’s role in unifying the nation and the need for a revitalized Italian race to expand abroad. Additionally, the regime called for the Fascistization of children’s bodies through the disciplined practice of good hygiene and physical fitness. With the successful implementation of such lessons, the regime believed, both the nation-state and race would be prepared to expand to fill their rightful place in the world.
The introduction of the concept of totalitarianism to Fascist rule clearly influenced the model of Italian society and the infrastructure of Fascist education, but it also subtly transformed official language about the nation, the race, and italianità. The 1920s’ ideas of nation, fatherland, and race were still widespread in Fascist rhetoric, but they frequently became embedded in the more administrative idea of the state. That is, at the heart of the definition of the Fascist nation was the state—the formal infrastructure of the Fascist government and its many agents. As an example, the prominent Fascist educator Angelo Cammarosano laid out a definition of the state (lo stato) in a 1930 article that identified three chief components: people, territory, and government. He first described the people within the state, who were “a group or society of men.” He continued to explain that “when these men are of the same razza, language, and religion, and they share traditions, customs, and ideals, we call them part of a ‘nation,’ and that is to say that the people were born of the same stirpe.”9 Cammarosano did not elaborate on the basic concepts of razza or stirpe here, but he did go on to explain that the state’s territory, where “said people” resided, could be considered a patria—“the land of our fathers”—when the people had lived there for a long time. As in the 1920s, these ideas of nation and race were interrelated and often interchangeable. Finally, he addressed the government of those people, to which all were “subordinate, under penalty of coercion,” and which gave the state a structure that differentiated it from the broader ideas of nation or fatherland.10 This characterization of the state, which relied on a group of people with shared historical and cultural characteristics—a race—typified some of the more general shifts in the Fascist definition of the Italian fatherland and italianità that took place in the early 1930s.
As the last chapter discussed, there was also a demonstrable shift in Fascist language that indicated a growing concern in the campaign for bonifica umana for the quality of the Italian race as much as its quantity. Sileno Fabbri, president of the ONMI between 1934 and 1937, wrote in 1933, “When one speaks of the defense of the razza, one does not mean, nor should one mean, only physical defense; instead, one must aim for both moral and intellectual defense; that alone will improve quality as well as quantity.”11 Articles and speeches by other Fascist bureaucrats and leaders of the demographic campaign also frequently emphasized the need to improve or defend the race. One public health official explained, “The peoples who lead, while they increase in numbers, also refine those selective virtues that create legions out of their great numbers instead of flocks. . . . A razza that is increasingly strong in muscle, brain, and civic virtues: that is the ultimate goal of the demographic program.”12 What is striking about this quote, in addition to the idea that Italians needed to be aware of their racial makeup, is the official’s distinction between the flocks of people that weaker nations produced and the legions of individuals raised in stronger nations. This emphasis meshed well with the pedagogical rhetoric of the period that distinguished between instruction and education; at least in theory, the regime did not want mindless followers but rather conscientious and disciplined Fascists. The creation of such a population would require strengthening only the most valuable characteristics of italianità.
Yet while there was no doubt among Italian scholars that human races existed, many of them in the early 1930s argued against the idea that the peninsula and islands contained a single race. Instead, many supported logic in line with what Arcangelo Ilvento presented in a 1932 article: “Every people is formed through the historical processes of invasions and wars and the biological processes of encounters between the invaders and the invaded, by an amalgam of various sub-races, fused in the crucible of the nation, so that one can speak more of a stirpe in an historical sense than of razza in a biological sense.”13 In particular, many Italian scholars argued that Italy’s regions had historically been composed of several races; but as Giuseppe Steiner wrote in his 1931 book on the culture of Fascism, “the Roman empire slowly equalized and fused all of these various Italic groups into one people that shared many particular regional characteristics, customs, and habits, but were not different enough to break the unity of the nation. Instead, they served to make the civilization more complicated and varied.”14 The theory that the combination of different races produced a more dynamic population pervaded Italian racial theory in the late 1920s and early 1930s.15 Mussolini claimed in his 1932 interviews with Emil Ludwig, “Of course there are no pure races left; not even the Jews have kept their blood unmingled. Successful crossings have often promoted the energy and the beauty of a nation.”16 Despite the growing usage of the terms razza and stirpe at the beginning of the new decade, then, the ambiguity of their definitions allowed the state—and particularly the education system—to continue manipulating them in order to refine the contours of Italian racial identity.
The frequent praise for Italy’s regional diversity may have been based on the belief that it actually united the nation, but educational policies and curricular choices of the period indicated mounting apprehension about the tenacity of Italy’s regional differences.17 Alongside the ministry’s 1929 transformation into the MEN, it began to decrease its emphasis on region-specific education. Instead of using personal connections to local cultures as a way for students to relate to their national identity—as Gentile’s theory of organic learning had originally proposed—the MEN encouraged educators to place more weight on identifying first with the unified nation and race and second with the region. Students were officially forbidden to speak anything but formal Italian in the classroom, and the introduction of comprehensive national textbooks the next year included a secondary series of regional textbooks that was to be integrated only into third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade curricula.18 These books were meant to supplement lessons on national history, geography, and culture in the upper grades, only after students had a solid foundation in the characteristics of italianità. Furthermore, students were required to prove knowledge of the primary physical, cultural, and economic characteristics of every region in the elementary school exit exams.19 In other words, familiarity with Italy’s regions was to enrich and deepen students’ understanding of the nation at large but not to overshadow it with an exaltation of local heritage. Provincialism was to be banished once and for all. This change in the treatment of regional associations plainly illustrated the continued difficulties in the project to unite the disparate regions of the Italian Kingdom into one nation. Moreover, it demonstrated the regime’s intensified campaign to complete that project by molding the race according to a Fascist definition of italianità.
This stage in the evolution of the Fascist racial campaign was clearly visible in the elementary curriculum that the newly minted state textbooks presented. Textbooks continued to highlight religious parables, Italy’s innate beauty, and stories about famous Italians. More evident, however, was an emphasis on the history and the goals of the Fascist state; romanità (Romanness), the modern nation, and the PNF all became integral to the campaign to create a popular mentality of superiority and entitlement that would, MEN officials hoped, push Mussolini’s children to support the aims of the state.
At this point in the ventennio, the Fascists had been in power long enough that they could, and felt the need to, show the regime’s accomplishments in the rejuvenation of the Italian nation and race—just as the MRF illustrated. The first edition of the third-grade textbook described the Fascist transformation into a New Italy particularly succinctly: “Few years have passed since the March on Rome, and already the face of our Italy has completely changed. There are no more strikes, riots, or lack of discipline; instead, there is order, respect for superiors, peace between workers and bosses.”20 As the regime’s tenure lengthened, its challenge would be to strike the delicate balance of asserting what it claimed were immense strides taken to resurrect the historic greatness of the race while also insisting on the perpetual urgency of the revolution: “October 28, 1922 was the beginning of [Fascism’s] great work of renewal, which is not yet done, but has already changed the face of Italy.”21 The regime felt comfortable claiming a certain amount of success in its campaign to form the New Italian, but unceasing curricular emphasis on a glorification of the culture, history, language, geography, morals, and spirit that held the Italian population together—their italianità—indicated that it emphatically did not believe the revolution was complete at its tenth anniversary.
More than anything else, textual emphasis on the parallel histories of ancient Rome and Fascism exemplified the escalating drive to Fascistize the Italian student body and italianità. One of the most prominent images in the new textbooks—and everywhere in Fascist Italy—was the fascio littorio.22 It was no coincidence that the Fascist Party appropriated such a prominent icon of ancient Rome, evoking both the history and power of the classical civilization; like Mussolini’s excavation of Rome itself, the PNF and regime utilized the fascio littorio’s historic significance as a representation of the state’s power over life and death in order to merge the past with the present.23 A second-grade textbook described the more popular identity of the symbol as “the will of all Italians, which remains united in order to be strong and invincible.”24 Many books also included an object lesson about the fascio littorio. One such story described a peasant whose many sons often fought with each other instead of working together. Then, one day, a wild animal attacked one son, and his brothers did not come to help. When the father learned of this incident, he gathered his children together and presented them with a bundle of sticks. He explained, “Take one twig and you can break it easily; take two and you can break them with little work; take three and you can break them with a certain amount of effort . . . take five, six, ten, however—no matter how hard you try—you will no longer be able to break them. . . . So it is with you; as long as you are united and support one another, no one will be able to do you harm, and you will win. If you are divided, however, anyone will be able to offend and ruin you.”25 The icon was more than a mere appropriation of an ancient emblem; it was a physical incarnation of Fascist morality. This particular allegory reinforced the regime’s core values of patriarchy, strength in unity, obedience, and loyalty.
Texts further highlighted Fascism’s inherent bonds with Roman history with celebrations of Mussolini’s 1923 announcement that April 21 was officially to be the birthday of Rome and a national holiday.26 Of course, there is little evidence of what day the city of Rome was actually settled, but choosing April 21 as the official anniversary of Rome’s founding further marked the national resurrection of the ancient Roman past as a central, unifying theme in the campaign to strengthen the Italian race and legitimize the Fascist state. As one author concisely explained, “For us, Fascism is a return to romanità”—the essence of ancient Rome and the basis for italianità.27 Moreover, the Fascist significance of April 21 stretched beyond a commemoration of Romulus and Remus; it was also the regime’s chosen replacement date for the Socialist Labor Day of May 1.28 An author of the second-grade text explained, “Rome is the capital of Italy and once was the capital of the world. Benito Mussolini, who wants to reestablish the greatness of Rome in the world, has decreed April 21 is a national holiday: it is the celebration of the birth of Rome and the celebration of work.”29 On this important date, the entire Italian race was to celebrate the historical and social roots of italianità. And as was mentioned in chapter 1, the regime added the party’s “calling to the colors,” or leva fascista, to the celebrations of April 21 in 1927.30 This ritual was, as Mussolini exclaimed in anticipation of its second iteration, “a most important moment for the educational system and the totalitarian and integrated preparation of the Italian man that the Fascist Revolution considers . . . the most fundamental obligation of the state.”31 With this rite of passage—on the anniversary of Rome’s origin and during the celebration of Italy’s laborers—the Duce promised Italians the perpetuation of Rome’s legacy and the fruits of their labor.
These rituals followed Mussolini’s vague but emotional call for Italians to return to their “Roman, Latin, Mediterranean style.”32 In his 1932 book on the fundamentals of Fascist culture, renowned children’s author Giuseppe Fanelli began with a description of Mussolini’s push for the advancement of the Latin stirpe and the immortality of the Italian spirit even before his creation of the Fascist squads.33 In part as a result, Fanelli argued, the “eternal spirit of Rome” infused the very core of Fascism. He concluded that it was not enough simply to applaud the successes of the contemporary regime; it was essential also to consider the Roman traditions on which the triumphs of Fascism relied. Underscoring this association was the increasing focus within elementary education on the racial continuities between the ancient Roman people and the contemporary Fascist population embodied in the idea of the Italian stirpe. As another writer proclaimed, “The Italic stirpe has always cherished the original characteristics of its healthy and prolific razza, since the characteristics of the Italian family, particularly in the countryside which the Duce has often exalted, have always been these: profound religiosity, unquestioned morality, attachment of fathers to their homes, complete dedication of the woman to her children and home. And then: a sober life, frugal tastes, simple desires, and modest habits.”34
Given the growing presence of the terms stirpe and razza in the elementary education of the early 1930s and their implicit links to ancient Rome, it should come as no surprise that history played an ever-more prominent component of the Fascist primary school curriculum. One Fascist orator and scholar, Carlo Delcroix, wrote to Fascist children, “History is the greatest teacher of a nation, and the most maternal voice for a people. . . . For you children it must have an even greater purpose, more maternal and more important: to educate and ignite love and pride in the fatherland and the sweetest feeling of being and being able to say that you are Italian.”35
Though historical anecdotes flowed throughout all elementary textbooks, the academic subject of history was limited to grades 3 through 5.36 Third-grade students were introduced to the subject with a focus on modern Italian history, beginning with the Risorgimento and then discussing Italian unification and the Great War. The most consistent approach to this era was briefly to mention the preceding period of foreign rule and then to applaud the Italian movements for independence and unification.37 The presence of foreign rulers on the peninsula and islands was, interestingly, often characterized as punishment for supposed weaknesses of the Italian race: “After the unification of the Italian nation and the emergence from misery and servitude—with which Italians harshly atoned for the faults and errors committed in the centuries when they were divided and clashing—it was blessed forever.”38 Fascists regarded the years after unification, then, as a time in which Italians reclaimed the land and power that had historically belonged to them but had been taken from them as a result of their own failings. Consequently, the supporters of the Risorgimento, united Italy, and World War I had fought for the recuperation of the race’s natural property and influence.
The Fascist treatment of Italy’s modern era in the third grade ended with a portrayal of the Fascist Revolution as the final step in the total redemption of the nation and race: “Today Italy, which was divided and subservient one hundred years ago, is one of the greatest powers in the world and presents an awesome display of discipline, work, and faith. The heroes and martyrs of the Risorgimento, Great War, and Fascist Revolution made the fatherland free, united, prosperous, and strong.”39 Though each iteration of the textbook contained a somewhat unique collection of historic personalities, there were some characters besides Mussolini and King Vittorio Emanuele III who consistently appeared in these books. Great protagonists of the Risorgimento, such as Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini, as well as the poet and nationalist Gabriele D’Annunzio, were most often eulogized; but folk heroes of the Great War, such as Cesare Battisti and Enrico Toti, were also highlighted in order to demonstrate the ability of every Italian to sacrifice himself or herself for the glory of the fatherland and race.40
History melded with civics lessons in the argument that Italy’s long-standing efforts to redeem the race were finally bearing fruit; nevertheless, students needed to continue the struggle so that the labors of their forefathers would not be wasted. Italy, the third-grade text announced, “now waits for you to grow, healthy in mind and body, in order to continue this work, in a way in which Italy will again be a splendid beacon of civilization; ready, like our fathers and our ancestors, if the fatherland calls, to run to arms, and to fall willingly, if its salvation and grandeur demand the ultimate sacrifice of you.”41 Mussolini’s children could not afford to slacken their vigilance; only with continued effort and sacrifice would a new, Fascist empire establish itself in the world.
Students moved from studying modern Italian history in third grade to receiving an extensive education in the history of ancient civilizations in fourth. Such a topical transition suggested a belief that if students had a solid understanding of their most recent past, they could more easily understand the connections between it and Italy’s ancient predecessors. The first national fourth-grade textbook described several societies of the classical world, including Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Israel, as well as a number of cultures on the Italian peninsula. Its approach to ancient Jewish history is particularly noteworthy considering the regime’s anti-Semitic measures in the coming years. The book relayed the story of Abraham and then explained how ancient Jews differed from their Egyptian counterparts: “One reason was religious because the Egyptians worshipped many gods and gave them strange human forms with animal heads. The Jews, unique among ancient peoples, believed in one omnipotent God that did not take a corporeal shape. And their faith was so strong that they felt horror and disgust toward the people who worshipped idols. When Egyptian oppression became worse, a great leader, Moses, gathered all the Jews and led them to the Promised Land, Palestine.”42
There are a number of possible explanations for the relative sympathy with which this piece was written, the first of course being that ancient Jews were the forefathers of Christians. Second, the text compared Jews to a “barbarian” African population that worshipped multiple gods. Third, the Fascist regime held no formal stance for or against modern Jews at this point—though there were plenty of anti-Semites within the party—and the author of this vignette might well have been able to write the story in whatever way he wanted. The absence of a similar narrative about the Jewish population of ancient Rome is striking, however.
More valuable to the racial education of Mussolini’s young New Italians was the fourth-grade text’s description of the early Latin population: “One of the smallest and poorest peoples in ancient Italy was that of the Latins. . . . They had a few poor families of herders and farmers, but they had great values and moral qualities. They were hardworking, frugal, and strong willed, of simple and pure customs, honest, faithful to their word, devoted to their families, religious, dedicated to ideas of justice and integrity.”43 The authors then made apparent the presumed correlations between the ancient Latins and the population Mussolini rescued in 1922: “Appreciate these values, children; they are the values of the worthy and the brave, and history, this history that I am telling you, teaches you that with and for these values, the small and poor Latin people did not just become the greatest people of the world, but also gave the world the highest forms of civilization.”44
The descendants of these modest Latins, of course, were the founders of ancient Rome, who, according to the textbook, conquered the ancient world and brought civilization to Europe and the Mediterranean. Roman rule, one author explained, meant
to keep many different populations obedient to the same laws; to assure peace, tranquility, and prosperity in this part of the world; to build hundreds of streets; to cast bridges over rivers; to construct ports; to found cities where there were savages and deserts; and to bring order, work, science, and civil society where savage tribes carried out a miserable life fighting fiercely among themselves. This was the benefit that Rome brought to the world as no one else was ever able to do: a benefit that secures eternal glory for Rome and should earn her eternal gratitude, because the grandeur of Rome was not simply a fortune dropped in the laps of a lazy people, it was not the violence of the armed, but it was earned by an army of virtue, with strong family values, with knowledge of the laws given to the world, with constant work and spilled blood and the life given with great generosity to all the lands in all the seas.45
The impulse behind the glorification of ancient Rome’s empire was not simply born of a Fascist call for greater national pride and unity. Inherent in these texts was Mussolini’s resolve to claim Italians’ inherited racial superiority over other races and nations. Quoted in a book for elementary students, the Duce stated, “We respect other peoples, but our Italy, Balilla, is the most beautiful, the most holy, the greatest! No one will ever be able to equal the power of Rome, the heroism of our martyrs, the courage of our small and proud infantry, the impulse and audacity of our Black Shirts, the strong will of our workers.”46 According to this quote, the roots of Italian superiority were found in the history and spirit of the people.
However, a few pages later in the same book, the author again cited Mussolini, this time exclaiming, “It is Fascism that formed the new Italian, the Italian who is proud to be Italian in comparison to all the other peoples, more or less civilized, of the world.”47 In this second declaration, the strength of the race was only realized through the work and sacrifices of the Fascist Revolution. The juxtaposition of these two quotes and their seemingly divergent interpretations of the source of Italian superiority illustrates the persistent difficulties the regime faced in attempting to prove both the inherent preeminence of the people and the essential role of Fascism in the formation of that position. Ultimately, the message Mussolini and the MEN wanted to convey to their young Fascist followers was best defined by its simplicity and was most explicitly stated in a 1933 manual for Balilla squad leaders: “Italy is a great country and the Duce wants our people to affirm its superiority over all others.”48
The fifth-grade texts repeated much of the material reviewed in the previous two grades, though their authors did attempt to place Italy in a more global historical context, primarily focusing on the peninsula’s importance to European history but also to the larger Mediterranean world. Broken into two general sections—the medieval and modern periods—the state textbook spent very little time on any history before the emergence of the Renaissance. While vignettes about early Italic kings and the Crusades earned the space of a few pages, much of the book’s first part focused on the great accomplishments of the peninsula’s fourteenth- and fifteenth-century city-states. As one piece explained, “at this time, even though it was darkened by continuous internal strife and wars against foreign tyrants, Italy knew it was lighting the fires of a new civilization in the presence of the world. The arts and letters were reawakened to a fresh life by brilliant powers that raised the name of our fatherland to its ancient grandeur.”49 One of the greatest products of this era of artistic, mercantile, and intellectual preeminence was of course the great Genoese merchant and explorer Christopher Columbus, who, inspired by the achievements of his homeland’s Renaissance, ushered Italy and the rest of the world into the “Modern Era” with his “discovery” of the Americas.50
In the shadow of these triumphs appeared the unpleasantness of the peninsula’s foreign occupations. Bright moments of heroic Italian nationalism were still found in this long and dark time, but the fifth-grade text quickly moved on from the early modern period to bask in the accomplishments of the Risorgimento and the Kingdom of Italy. And of course these steps toward the reclamation of Italians’ inherent glory culminated in the kingdom’s greatest victory: Mussolini’s March on Rome.51
What stood out as new to the fifth-grade curriculum was its discussion of Italy’s first efforts as an imperial power; early settlements in Eritrea, Somalia, and Libya, according to the text, helped Italy “open new commercial avenues,” provide work for her children, and keep foreigners from completely taking over the African coast of the Mediterranean.52 This narrative merged perfectly with the state’s campaign to promote Fascist expansion abroad, and its echoes infiltrated all elementary textbooks. Lessons presented national expansion as a matter of historical and irredentist entitlement as well as autarkic necessity. The fourth-grade textbook explained to its readers, “Italy, because of its location, should be the natural ruler of the Mediterranean Sea, into which it stretches like a long pier; and which was dominated by the Roman Empire, and then by the merchants of Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Naples, Amalfi, and Palermo.”53 According to Fascist rhetoric, both historic precedent and geographic dominance necessitated the reconquest of “intrinsically” Italian lands. Giuseppe Fanciulli encapsulated this belief in his book The Great Italian Navigators when he wrote, “We Italians have two fatherlands: our beautiful land from the Alps to the islands and the changing, immense ocean.”54 Though these calls for irredentism, colonialism, and autarky were already visible in the educational language of the 1920s, the curriculum and general propaganda of the early 1930s showed an elevated earnestness to address these concerns.
One cause of these more urgent calls for expansion was Mussolini’s escalating desire to harness the international influence of Italians working and living abroad, particularly in light of the expanding global economic crisis. In essence, these Italian émigrés still belonged to the nation and had only emigrated out of economic necessity; they were natural members of the Italian race. It was the state’s responsibility, therefore, to make room for them once again by expanding Italy’s territories to the extent of its historical and racial entitlement.
State textbooks explained that the first step to drawing Italy’s dispersed population back to the fatherland had been to increase national agricultural and industrial production in the 1920s. The relative success of Mussolini’s autarkic campaigns had somewhat insulated the kingdom from the aftershocks of the 1929 economic collapse—with which the rest of Europe and North America continued to struggle—and allowed more people to find work within Italy. Such economic growth offset the losses of population, labor, and resources to other nations: “The government wants to increase work in the fields and workshops of Italy, so that the growing population can find, as much as possible, work and bread in their fatherland. That is why the government pushes and helps farmers to improve the mode of production through the Battle for Wheat; with the reclamation projects it hopes to make arable the lands that have been abandoned because they are swampy and malarial.”55 The texts further argued for Italians to return to the fatherland because their immigration to territories ruled by other governments often led to their cultural abandonment of Italian identity. The nation needed to grow economically in order to bring its members home and strengthen the race as a whole.56
In the early 1930s the regime put together a permanent exhibition in Rome on Italians abroad to increase awareness of the potential political and economic strength these emigrants could bring to the fatherland and race at large. This exhibit aimed to show the historical impact of Italians outside their national borders and simultaneously to highlight the renewed destiny of Italy’s race.57 Even with all of Fascism’s reclamation and autarkic measures, the contemporary boundaries of the Italian nation-state were too limited to support 40 million Italians—let alone the 60 million Mussolini demanded by midcentury—and therefore the regime needed to expand its territory, in both Europe and Africa. One observer of this exhibition explained its message particularly well: “The Italian razza will grow and prosper in the Mediterranean that was the theater of our history for millennia.”58
To excite the imaginations of Mussolini’s children even further, books highlighted the thrills promised to the race’s adventurous explorers. In 1931 Giuseppe Fanelli published a book, Love of Faraway Lands: Explorations, Adventures, and Discoveries by Italian Pioneers in Africa, which, as the title suggests, shared with its young audience the stories of Italian adventurers and missionaries. The explicitly romanticized vision of travel in the wilds of Africa—certainly not original to Italian literature—hoped to encourage young Italians to visualize a Fascist imperial future.59 Fanelli wrote in his introduction, “Italy, which has never been second to any nation in the history of human bravery, has a great heroic group of explorers—illustrious figures to whom young Italians should look as one of the most noble expressions of our stirpe.”60 This volume took the opportunity to sing the praises of Italian exploration and colonization from the Roman Empire to the Fascist era but also to show how inferior and uncultured the peoples of Africa had been and continued to be. Fanelli reported that the Mombuttani culture still revered cannibalism, which “the nobility practiced and was the pride of the razza.” Many other communities continued to practice slavery, which was an institution “as old as the world”—even the Greeks and Romans had practiced it—but which had never been “so terrible or ferocious an example of oppression” as in the modern cases of African slavery.61
As perhaps the most articulate example of the many layers to Fascism’s rationale for expansion in the early 1930s, the third-grade textbook explained, “In Africa, Asia, and the Americas, there are great expanses of land, rich in natural resources, but inhabited by indigenous populations that are still barbaric or savage and who do not know how to exploit them.” The author then changed tactics, explaining the entitlement to European expansion in light of such supposed ignorance in striking terms of physical appearance: “The white peoples, however, thanks to their civilization, understand the value of those resources and use them to develop industries and commerce in their countries, with which they increase their prosperity and power. It is therefore natural that white peoples have occupied those lands, in order to get the resources that are so important for the well-being of their countries, and to show the indigenous peoples the light and the benefits of a superior civilization.” The piece then continued, describing united Italy of the late nineteenth century: “Our Italy did not possess any colonies, even though it had already risen to a level of great power. Its population exceeded thirty million. Its industries and commerce, always expanding, needed greater and greater quantities of those natural resources, of which, unfortunately, its own soil is poor. It was therefore of vital necessity for Italy to acquire colonial possessions.”62 Of course, such logic determined that the further population growth of the Fascist period would necessitate another expansion of Italian holdings.63 In short, cultural, historical, economic, and racial imperatives came together to motivate the race in support of a campaign for Italian national expansion.
As the 1929 transformation of the education ministry’s title indicated, it would not be enough for Fascist educators simply to instruct their pupils about their inherited entitlement to global dominance; these children needed to be educated to embody the racial characteristics necessary to follow through on the mission of Fascism’s New Italy. These future leaders needed to prove the race’s birthright through the successful development of Fascism’s physical, moral, and intellectual ideals. And by the early 1930s, Fascist administrators began to see positive changes in the health and strength of the young Italian population: “For some years now we have observed a considerable improvement in the razza: children that are growing like palm trees; sturdy, muscular adolescents, healthy in body, and for that reason, also in spirit, ready, willing, strong.”64
The MEN continued to view physical education and public health campaigns as fundamental to these advancements in the Italian race, and lessons and training in such fields increasingly permeated the school day and extracurricular activities.65 The regime urged every school to have playing fields so that all children could get out of their classrooms and into the sun. Games, seen as an important part of physical education, were also rigorously overseen by the regime; they were thought to prevent, or at least limit, physical defects that could be the result of limited physical activity.66 The true benefit of physical education in elementary school, however, was, in the eyes of its proponents, simply to encourage the natural growth of the child. This attitude in and of itself did not differ from that of the 1920s in Italy or other western European countries; however, in the early 1930s, officials began inserting overt symbols of the regime’s influence on Italian life into the lessons. Visibly distinguishing the Fascist system from broader Western trends, all physical education classes and competitions—for both boys and girls—began and ended with the Roman salute, and exercises included marching and commanding.67 Such changes helped to insinuate Fascist culture further into the established field of physical education and the everyday activities of elementary school students.
Extracurricular outings, exercises, and lessons undertaken by the Balilla and Piccole Italiane were deemed necessary supplements to the elementary school experience.68 As with all aspects of an Italian child’s life, the activities undertaken by the ONB were to contribute to the formation of purely and completely Fascist members of the race who would ultimately become the leaders of the Fascist nation and empire: “Physical and youth education, in the Fascist state, is inspired by healthy educational standards, by discipline, by order, and by conscious bravery, in addition to the physical improvement of the stirpe.”69 Of particular note in this project was the increasingly significant role of military culture in physical education and specifically in the sections of Balilla and Avanguardisti. As the prominent textbook author Oronzina Quercia Tanzarella described, their members constituted “a true army of children that marches toward the conquest of the future.”70 The focus on military culture manifested itself in explicit ways—such as the groups’ organization into Roman squads and phalanxes—and, more importantly, in the values encouraged among its recruits. Quercia Tanzarella continued to explain that the ONB was “an organized army with discipline and almost with military consciousness, with rigorous divisions and subdivisions, with its own regulations, and with precise hierarchies.”71
These characteristics that the ONB promoted were not limited to its male divisions. Girls, too, were encouraged to develop standards of order, discipline, and loyalty; and a military vocabulary and order worked well to inculcate these key sentiments in all Fascist children. The gender differentiation more obviously took shape in the activities and imagery used to frame the activities of the Balilla and Piccole Italiane. While boys were ever more exposed to camping, hunting, fishing, and other pursuits to make them more proficient outside the home and within the culture of the military, girls were exposed to “rhythmic” exercises and courses in first aid and child care to prepare them for the rigors of marriage and motherhood. Girls, in short, were trained to defend the home front and support the boys in what was increasingly becoming clear would be their military future.
Additionally, concerns for a child’s physical environment increasingly played a role in the prospective strengths or weaknesses of the Italian youth: “Various conditions and habits of life, environmental conditions, states of mind, etc. can profoundly change the individual physical-psychic makeup”; and the MEN and the ONB needed to manage such factors as much as possible.72 Textbooks were filled with recommendations (and admonitions) that would lead students to embrace healthy lifestyles:
To grow up healthy:
Wash early and breathe in the pure air of the morning.
Wash well and often during the day and do not ever forget to wash your hands before eating.
Do not drink cold water and do not stand in the wind when you are sweating.73
Beyond simple instruction, however, teachers started promoting competitions to raise awareness about personal hygiene and health. Many schools implemented additional policies to encourage personal hygiene, such as providing students with uniforms and personal toiletry kits (which included a washcloth, soap, a comb, a toothbrush, and a nailbrush), and classrooms with informative posters and first aid kits.74
Clearly, the importance of maintaining a healthy physical environment extended to the student’s personal display of discipline, strength, and hygiene. Members of the Balilla organizations had always worn uniforms, but the 1928 ban of all other youth groups (except those associated with Catholic Action) forced the significant expansion of its membership and of the visibility of its uniforms. The fact that these uniforms reflected one’s age and gender, as well as the season and occasion, meant they mirrored Italy’s professional military uniforms.75 Indeed, organization leaders and textbooks encouraged students to view their uniforms as illustrative of their role as servants to the fatherland and race. Boys were given to believe that they were playing their part—even at a young age—to protect the nation and should be willing to do so with arms, if necessary. As a character in the ONB textbook written for first graders on vacation exclaimed:
How wonderful my Balilla uniform is: a black shirt, blue tie, and a fez with a golden eagle.
When I wear my handsome uniform I feel my heart beat faster because of the joy of already being a little soldier.
I raise my arm and promise to give honor to the “holy Black Shirt.”76
Likewise, Piccole Italiane, dressed in their black skirts, white blouses, and black berets, were encouraged to think of themselves as essential members of this military, dedicated to the health and safety of their families and their fatherland. All together, these children were the sturdy New Italians who would be the envy of the world.
The gendered distinction in physical education and among ONB uniforms supported the gendered duties boys and girls were expected to observe. Though all children were expected to be obedient and devoted Fascists, by the early 1930s, their separate social and political obligations were delineated in the first years of public education. The report cards for the young Franca Rizzi of Foggia outline the variety of courses required of her in elementary school. In addition to the primary academic subjects of religion, reading and writing, math, Fascist culture, and hygiene, Rizzi was obligated to take part in regular lessons in home economics and manual labor each year.77 Even more important to the successful future of Italy’s young girls was adherence to the catechism of the Piccole Italiane.
The Piccola Italiana must prepare herself to be the Fascist woman of tomorrow: this is the discipline she must follow.
I. To fulfill her duty as daughter, sister, student, and friend with joy and happiness, even if that duty is sometimes difficult.
II. To serve her fatherland as if she were the greatest mother, the mother of all good Italians.
III. To love the Duce, who has made the fatherland stronger and greater.
IV. To obey her elders happily.
V. To have the courage to oppose those who suggest bad things and mock honesty.
VI. To educate her body to compete successfully and her soul not to fear pain.
VII. To flee stupid vanity, but to love beautiful things.
VIII. To love work, which is life and harmony.78
Italian girls had the challenging task of being both attractive and solicitous members of society while also, as point 7 of the catechism stated, avoiding any behavior that might be interpreted as vain. Educators and officials began more vociferously to criticize what they believed was the excessive vanity of society and the ways in which such values hampered the abilities of Fascist women—and therefore men—to perform their national duties.79 Piccole Italiane, in essence, were meant to serve their race, nation, and family—in that order—every moment of their lives. They were to submit their body and spirit to the values and will of the Fascist state so that they, in turn, would become model mothers.80
The regime dictated that the three rules of conduct for a Piccola Italiana were propriety, discipline, and generosity: “These qualities are necessary for anyone who wants to become the perfect Fascist woman, who is a strong [militante] force in the regime, the custodian of the traditions of the stirpe and of the Fascist ideas about governing the home, raising and educating children, and assisting family and neighbors.”81 Noteworthy is the author’s use of the word militante to denote “strong” or “forceful,” even in the context of feminine ideals; Fascist girls and women, too, were seen as a united force, devoted to the support of the masculine army that was to carry out the will of the fatherland and race.
The multifaceted approach to the racial education of Mussolini’s children reflected the totalitarian efforts of the regime at large. The Ministry of National Education created a unified elementary curriculum in its new state textbooks that continued to underscore the common characteristics of italianità but increasingly highlighted the factors that made the Fascist—not just the Italian—race historically, spiritually, and politically superior to all others. The ONB and ONMI, too, urged parents and their children to shed the unhealthy habits of the past and embrace the discipline, strength, and pride that came from a truly Fascist lifestyle. By combining an education in Italians’ illustrious imperial past with its present demographic, economic, and moral needs—as well as the cultural and moral inferiority of other peoples—the regime further delimited its requirements of the New Italy and laid the essential groundwork for the conquest of its imperial future.