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Gymnastics between school desks: An educational practice between hygiene requirements, healthcare and logistic inadequacies in Italian primary schools (1870-1970)

Marta Brunelli (Department of Education, Cultural Heritage and Tourism, University of Macerata, Macerata, Italy)
Juri Meda (Department of Education, Cultural Heritage and Tourism, University of Macerata, Macerata, Italy)

History of Education Review

ISSN: 0819-8691

Article publication date: 2 October 2017

228

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution and use of the school desk in unified Italy as a multifunctional and highly efficient tool, which was required not only to efficiently support in-class activities, to facilitate the classroom management and finally to maintain a correct body posture in order to preserve pupils’ health, but also to accomplish the additional task of working as real “gymnastic equipment”, i.e. suitable for performing various gymnastic exercises inside the classroom.

Design/methodology/approach

The assumption upon which this paper rests is that school desks have always been signifiers charged with multiple meanings related to the evolution of curriculum, pedagogic ideas and daily school practices, which have often been forgotten, abandoned or, for some reasons, underrepresented in the official history of education as well as in the collective memory of school. In order to rebuild this forgotten history, and retrace the possible theoretical-pedagogical basis underlying such practice, the authors have systematically reviewed the Italian manuals on gymnastics between desks from the 1870s to the 1970s, retraced sources documenting this practice in the daily school life (government rules, school programmes, school hygiene prescriptions, iconographic sources, teachers and school managers’ testimonies) and finally, compared with other foreign practices (such as “calisthenics”).

Findings

The convergence between many differentiated sources has demonstrated the longevity of this school practice, which was not only the fruit of educational theories of gymnastic teachers but was also determined by the backwardness and logistic inadequacies of many Italian schools. The paper reveals how this gymnastic practice, after establishing itself in the post-Unification Italian schools, continued almost uninterrupted until the Second World War and even until the 1970s, evidencing how gymnastic teachers, hygienists, educationalists and lawmakers continued, over almost a century, to scientifically legitimise (from the top downwards) an educational practice that was actually driven from the bottom upwards, i.e. determined by an endemic lack of adequate spaces and tools for physical education in Italian schools.

Originality/value

For the very first time, the special source of Italian manuals and booklets on gymnastics between desks has been located, analysed and systematically reviewed for the period 1870s-1970s, and then cross-checked against differentiated sources. This study actually represents the first step of a research which must be still further developed. Undoubtedly, the “new” source represented by the manuals of “gymnastics between school desks” offered a first original perspective from which to explore the use of this furniture in the school of the past, thereby enabling historians of education to shed the first light on a school practice that has been overlooked or forgotten, and still hidden within the “black box of schooling”.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors are sincerely grateful to all those people who provided scientific advice and access to sources, such as Professor Olga Cicognani of the University of Bologna, Coordinator of the Sports Library at the Centre for research and Documentation of the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI), Emilia Romagna branch in Bologna; Sergio Chiambaretta for providing historical photographs; the staff of the Civic Central Library of Turin for the precious bibliographic assistance, with special thanks to Patrizia Bonino for her attentive support. Finally, the authors would like to thank Lucy Howell for carefully revising the English translation of the text. Even though the paper is the fruit of close cooperation between the two authors, Marta Brunelli is author of first and second sections, and Juri Meda of “Premises”, third section and “Conclusions”.

Citation

Brunelli, M. and Meda, J. (2017), "Gymnastics between school desks: An educational practice between hygiene requirements, healthcare and logistic inadequacies in Italian primary schools (1870-1970)", History of Education Review, Vol. 46 No. 2, pp. 178-193. https://doi.org/10.1108/HER-01-2016-0008

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited

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