And Capital is not exiled, as in the Russian communistic dream; we consider it an increasingly important actor in the drama of production.
In this, my Autobiography, I have emphasized more than once the fact that I have always tried to weave an organic and coherent character into all the fabric of my political work. I have not confined myself to giving merely an outward veneer or contour to Italian life; I wished to influence the very depths of its spirit. I founded my work on facts and on the real conditions of the Italian people; from such realistic activity I drew valuable lessons. I have been able to bring about useful, immediate results looking toward a new future for our country.
One of the reforms which I have promoted and have closely followed in all its successive developments is the reorganization of the schools. This has been called the Gentile Reform, after the name of the Minister of Public Instruction, whom I appointed immediately following the March on Rome. The gravity and importance of school problems cannot escape the attention of any modern statesman mindful of the destiny of his people. The School must be considered in all its complete expression. Public schools, Intermediate schools, University institutions, all exercise a profound influence on the trend—both moral and economic—of the life of any nation. From the beginning this has been ever in my mind. Perhaps my early experience as a school teacher increased an unvarying interest in youth and its development. In Italy there were traditions of higher culture, but the public schools had become degraded because of lack of means and, above all, because of lack of spiritual vision.
Although the percentage of illiteracy tended to diminish and even to disappear in certain regions, particularly in Piedmont, the citizens nevertheless were not getting from the school world those broad educational foundations—physical, intellectual and moral—that are possible and humane. The intermediate schools were too crowded because everybody was admitted, even those without merit, through endless sessions of examinations which were reduced often to a spiritless formality. We lacked intelligent systems of selection and vocational and educational valuation of individuals. The mill ground on and on, turning out stock patterns of human beings who ended for the most part by taking tasks in bureaucracy. They lowered the function of the public service by dead and not living personnel. Universities created other puppets in the so-called “free arts,” such as law and medicine.
I t was time that the delicate machinery which was of such consequence in the spiritual life of the nation be renewed in a precise, definite, organic form. We had to crowd out from the intermediate schools the negative and supercilious elements. We were determined to infuse into the public schools those broad humanistic currents in which our history and our traditions are so rich. Finally, it was indispensable to impose a new discipline in education—a discipline to which every one must submit, the teachers themselves first of all!
To be sure, teachers draw a very modest wage in Italy, and this is a problem that I am resolved to face and solve as soon as the condition of the budget will allow. Nevertheless, I cannot permit a limited, pinch-penny treatment of education. The niggardly policy is of old and typically Liberal and Democratic origin. It furnished teachers with a good pretext for performing their duties indifferently and for abandoning themselves to subversive thought, even against the state itself. This condition reached its climax in the humiliating fact that many teachers deserted their posts. We had had clamorous examples of such a tendency, not only in the elementary schools, but also in some of the universities.
Fascism put a stop to all this by making discipline supreme, discipline both for the high and for the low, particularly for those who had the high duty of teaching order and discipline and of maintaining the highest concepts of human service in the various schools of the régime.
We had an old school law which took its name from Minister Casati, a law that had been enacted in 1859 and had remained the fundamental law even after the successive retouching of Ministers Coppino, Daneo, and Credaro. We had to renew and refashion it, through the ardent will of our Party; we had to give it a broad didactic and moral vision; we had to infuse into it a spirit of vital rebirth which would appeal to the new Italy. Great ideas and great revolutions always create the right hour for the solution of many problems. The school problem, which had dragged on for many decades, has finally found its solution in the Gentile Reform. This is not the place to explain the reform in detail. I want to indicate, however, those fundamental principles which I myself discussed and settled in a few compact discussions with the Minister of Public Instruction. They can be summarized by the following points:
1st—The state provides schooling only for those who deserve it because of their merits and leaves to other initiatives students who are not entitled to a place in the state’s schools.