How was education used in order to secure consent and control?

Objective:What values were the fascists trying to indoctrinate

in youth?Starter:

a) What are the main reasons why you attend school?

b) Why do governments get involved in education?c) List in order of priority what you consider to be

the most important subjects taught at school?d) Do you think your government would share this

view?

Background

• Mussolini wanted to create a nation of Fascists.

• Wanted to indoctrinate the Italian people and make them adopt fascist values, attitudes and behaviour.

• Fascism aimed to develop a new national consciousness which would assume priority over class, regional and group identity.

• Highly ambitious aim given the strength of Italy’s traditional divisions which had hindered Liberal Italy’s attempts to create ‘Italians’.

How will he create this nation of Fascists?

Develop the concept of a heroic DICTATORSHIP

in which a single leader, Mussolini, became the embodiment of the ideals of the masses.

Character of the Italian people was to be changed

To become proud warriors of a great Italy, working hard to increase their country’s economic and military strength and devoted followers of their Duce

No intention to alter Italy’s basic social structure

The revolution Mussolini talked of was to be one of the spirit rather than a social and economic one.

Make list of values the fascists were trying to indoctrinate in youth.

What values were the fascists trying to indoctrinate in youth?

Why do you think the Fascists chose 28th October as the beginning of the regime, rather than 30th October when Mussolini was appointed?

How does the History essay title differ from those that you are set?

Task: What values were the fascists trying to indoctrinate in youth?

Write a paragraph

How did the Fascists use schools and universities for propaganda purposes?

• No major change in the structure of Italian schools in the 1920s.

• Appointed Gentile as Education Minister partly to reassure the ELITE

• Grammar schools were encouraged (ginnasio/liceo) which concentrated on Latin, philosophy and humanities.

Education Minister Gentile• Gentile was not interested in technical and

vocational reforms and believed in ‘fewer but better’ schools, happy to see weaker ones die

• Set up a standardised system of examinations – state & private schools

• Largely ignored illiteracy rate (30% in 1921) & discriminated against women.

• Attendance to go school actually dropped by 100,000 in the 1st 4 years of Fascist rule.

• Gentile aroused the anger of many fascists, and his system was steadily dismantled after his departure in 1924.

Post Gentile – serious attempt to fascistising education only came in the 1930s

• Standard textbook ‘libro unico’ in order to ‘mould in children a ‘real awareness of their duties as fascist citizens’.

• Centralised system: teachers made to take an oath of loyalty.

• Bottai 1939 School Charter• Bottai wanted to establish an organic union of

party and school which would ‘finish forever the age of the agnostic (sceptical, cynical) school, which was indifferent to political life….We decisively wish a Fascist school, a Fascist pedagogy, Fascist teaching to create the Fascist man.’

Bottai

• Wanted to break down class barriers

• More emphasis on science and technology

• Special schools for the children of peasants & craftsmen

• Manual work became part of the curriculum at all levels

• Middle Classes unhappy

• Experiment disrupted by outbreak of war

Analysis• Govt control over what occurred in educational

institutions declined the higher up the structure you went.

• No whole scale reorganisation of school structure more like just adding courses e.g. Military training

• Elementary teachers – younger and easier to replace

• Despite loyalty oath (from 1929) secondary and uni teachers weren’t all committed fascists

• Mass acceptance of oath probably prevented the purge of teachers necessary for the regime to achieve it’s aims.

• Was the regime truly totalitarian when it had limited dominance over the higher levels of education?

Tasks1. Why did Fascism focus on younger children

rather than university children?

2. Do you think it reasonable for teachers to take an oath of loyalty to the state?

Summary

Task: How did the Fascists use schools and universities for propaganda purposes?

What role did Fascist youth movements play?

Key words: ONB: Opera Nationale Balilla

BALILLA

This was the general term for all youth groups, and the particular name for the subgroup of 8-14 year olds. It was named after

the legendary Genoese schoolboy who threw stones at the Austrian occupiers in 1746

Apart from elementary education, it was probably youth organisations which were most successful in inculcating Fascist values into Italian youth. They organised a range of activities in the evenings and weekends. Young people were probably more attracted to them for the facilities rather than the propaganda message, but they clearly did help strengthen the regime.

What was the appeal of the Balilla to young Italians?

• Sports, physical exercise and keep fit classes were encouraged as was attendance at weekend rallies and summer camps

• Attention given to militaristic aspects of the movement and uniformed members were expected to take part in drills and parades

• Girls = more feminine pursuits domestic training in cookery and childcare to prepare them for motherhood.

• Amongst both girls and boys enthusiasm waned and attendance lapsed.

Balilla motto: ‘Believe! Obey! Fight!’

and members had to swear an oath of loyalty:

In the name of God and Italy, I swear to follow the orders of the Duce and to

serve the cause of the Fascist revolution with all my might and, if

necessary, with my blood.

Balilla wore black shirts, blue scarves, black tasselled caps and grey short trousersAvangardisti uniforms resembles adult Blackshirts.Also provided with miniature rifles and bayonets.At evening and weekend meetings, members joined together to sing popular fascist hymn

Once the rival Catholic youth movement was banned and membership of Fascist youth movements made

compulsory membership climbed over 8.5 million

Did Fascism win the hearts and minds of the young?

What factors limited the impact of fascist policies towards the young?

• Organisation very tied to the school system. Teachers urged to become ONB leaders .: disproportionately male and M/C many poorer girls and boys left school at 12-14 years old especially peasant children. Little mixing of classes.

• Catholicism – limited the spread of Fascist youth movements. Catholic schools did not properly enforce membership until 1930s and Catholic Action youth organisations continued to exist.

Analysis of BalillaIt is impossible to calculate the

extent of the success of the various movements in winning over the minds of Italian youth. To start with many joined to take advantage of the benefits of membership rather than out of political conviction. Once membership became compulsory, joining became an automatic and meaningless gesture. Some became blasé and joined the increasing number of absentees who failed to attend meetings.

BIG BUT!! The sheer length of time the Fascists were in power meant that all

Italians born between about 1910 and 1930 experienced Fascist propaganda at school and this probably served to strengthen the regime, if not convert millions to Fascism.

Legacy?

• It should be noted that when Mussolini was overthrown in 1943, the movement immediately disintegrated leaving behind little or no legacy of the fanatical enthusiasm and patriotic fervour of its heyday.

Tasks

a) p160 Historian’s assessments – complete worksheet

b) You are a civil servant in the Ministry of education in 1936. Mussolini has demanded

i) a report on the success of his attempts to create young Fascists and

ii) plans for ensuring further success