Learning to read and write in Italy in the second half of the nineteenth century. Primers and reading exercise booklets: publications, ministerial control and teaching 1861-1898

This paper wants to give an account of the first results of an ongoing investigation that has had as its specific object of study the production and the circulation of primers and reading exercise booklets which belong to one of the less analyzed sectors in the production of books for the Italian school system. The first part examines the lists of primers and reading exercise books published during the first fifteen years of the Italian State. The counting of different database (manes, res-educationis), paper and electronic directories and catalogs, was integrated from the archival sources. Firstly from the list collected by the provincial school boards and school inspectors in the course of investigations initiated by the Ministry of Education in 1869 and during the period between 1875 and 1881; these lists, which are now preserved in the central State Archives, were sent by the prefects and the supervisors to the Superior Council of the Ministry of Education to assess the suitability of textbooks and their use in classrooms. Secondly, the paper examines the evolution of editorial production recorded over the next twenty years, drawing on both lists of textbooks collected to be submitted to the Commission chaired by G. A. Barrili, in the years 1881-83, and those published by the Commission chaired by Giuseppe Chiarini and Pietro Cavazza between 1894 and 1898. Finally, the paper discusses some aspetcs of the linguistic content, but above the educational ones transmitted through primers and exercise booklets for supporting the development of civil and ethical dimension and the promotion of national identity in italian primary schools.