Social educators in boarding schools as described in the journal "L’Educazione Nazionale" (1919-1933)

Starting with the journal L’Educazione Nazionale (1919-33), founded and directed by Lombardo Radice, we examine the role of the social educator in boarding schools and other marginal educational settings in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. To date, it appears that few attempts have been made to reconstruct their professional story in such institutions. The journal published numerous contributions supporting the benefits of education in boarding schools, promoting them as an educational issue. Often through interviews with educators, supervisors and governesses, accounts of life in boarding schools reveal the gap between academia’s idea of education theory and the reality of these institutions, between a theory of welcoming and acknowledging, and a daily practice of obedience, punishment and control, and the reality of people serving as educators while waiting for better jobs. A partire da un’analisi della rivista L’Educazione Nazionale (1919-33), fondata e diretta da Lombardo Radice, si propone un approfondimento sulle figure educative nei contesti istituzionali dei collegi e della marginalità tra gli anni Venti e Trenta del Novecento italiano. La ricostruzione di una storia professionale in questi contesti appare finora poco esplorata. Nella rivista non mancano i contributi a sostegno dell’opportunità di portare il discorso educativo all’interno dei collegi, sollecitando il collegio come problema educativo.