They report to the schools office of the Directorate General for Italians Abroad. In the budget for the financial year 1932-33, a sum of 31,920,000 lire was allocated to schools abroad, with which the school office provides for the direct operation of important middle, elementary and infantile government schools a complex of slightly less of 1000 teachers and a school population of about 30,000 pupils, to supervise and grant financial subsidies to schools entrusted to the management of institutions, associations and private individuals (about 200 with a school population of about 140,000 students), to the awarding of grants of study and encouragement grants to foreign students,
Government schools run directly and scattered throughout the Mediterranean basin are gradually increasing (in the financial year 1931-32, 14 new ones were opened), but the greatest increase is given to schools managed by secular and religious bodies and subsidized and supervised by the state. With the 1930-31 school year, the reform of the state book was also implemented abroad. Particular Montessori sections were established in the most important elementary schools. The schools report directly to the consular agent.
University professorships and lectorates (about 200) are now scattered in every country of Europe, in Egypt, Palestine, India, Japan, China and the Americas. The action aimed at introducing the teaching of the Italian language in secondary schools of foreign countries has achieved tangible results in Romania, Bulgaria and North America, where the 228 Catholic High Schools of the United States have in the school year 1931-32 , like other North American schools and colleges , the teaching of the Italian language has been made compulsory.
Cultural institutes, founded on the basis of the law of 19 December 1926 for the creation of Italian cultural institutes abroad, have sprung up in Cologne, Malta, Lisbon, Athens, Prague and Bucharest with an artistic education program and cultural especially aimed at foreign educated classes. Italian public law courses are held at the universities of Frankfurt and Berlin, a corporate law course at the university of Shanghai.
History . – The origin of Italian schools abroad is to be found in the development of traffic and ideas that carried the flag of the Italian maritime republics on all the markets of the East, and in the consequent need to give the rudiments of knowledge and language to children of emigrants. Arisen on the initiative of some intellectual or some religious order. they gradually found the strength to expand and establish themselves outside the colonial sphere.
This hegemony, which lasted beyond the first half of the century. XIX, it was not dispersed due to the fall of the republics: because the patriots, forced to abandon their homeland in the Risorgimento, were the pioneers and apostles of the Italian schools abroad. When unity was achieved, these institutions were able to develop spontaneously: from the Mediterranean basin, where the origin of the Italian schools had an seniority often prior to that of the formation of the Kingdom (the school of Tunis, the first Europeans in that colony, it had been founded in 1831 by the Livorno refugee Pompeo Sulema), the schools spread beyond the Atlantic and in every part of the world, following the flow of migratory currents and the events of foreign policy.
Government intervention in colonial scholastic matters has its first official act in the royal decree of 21 September 1862 which recognized the schools founded in that year by the Italian colony of Alessandria with the title of Italian College. In 1869, schools abroad weighed on the budget for a sum of 40,000 lire; however, there was no unity of direction and legislative regulation in this activity, favored only by the personal interest of some minister.
The problem, object of study by A. Depretis in 1879, reported by the parliament to the government in 1880, was solved only by F. Crispi, who approved a general and organic reorganization scheme for which in the summer of 1888 five Eastern schools became state-run and another 50 royal schools were opened in the Eastern Mediterranean basin. In 1889, an Inspectorate General of Colonial Schools was created at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; grouped these in four central directions (Constantinople, Tunis, Smyrna and Alexandria in Egypt). The schools, which in 1881 were 87, rose to 318 scattered not only in the Mediterranean basin, but also in America, and 220 subsidized. The sum allocated for subsidies, which in the school year 1883-1884 had reached and surpassed 300,000 lire, was raised to 1,574,938 lire. With the Di Rudinì ministry, fifty-five Italian schools abroad were deprived of government recognition and all financial aid, so that most of them had to close, the sum allocated in the budget was reduced to 900,000 lire, the central directors suppressed (1891). Back to power, Crispi with the decree and regulation of 23 August 1894, even within the budget limits established by Di Rudinì, gave a rational administrative, disciplinary and didactic arrangement to schools and teachings.
This second Crispi law formed the basis of all the subsequent legislative provisions in favor of our schools abroad, which since then had a physiognomy and a structure corresponding to a unitary concept of politics and culture, integrated this by foreign schools with teaching of the Italian language, to which the government did not fail to turn its attention.
Local needs were tempered by the coordination of programs intended above all to make secular and religious, governmental and private schools sensitive organisms of Italian culture and life. The secular principle of teaching was able to reconcile the coexistence and proximity of religious schools, which, as the dissension between the State and the Church became less bitter, became more numerous, more Italian and more flourishing, aided in their works by the National Association to help Catholic missionaries, interested above all in the East and by the Cristoforo Colombo Association interested in the Americas. Government schools developed particularly in the Mediterranean basin and in the East, those subsidized in the Americas.
The law of 18 December 1910, in which P. Villari and A. Scalabrini collaborated, supplemented by decr. minist. 29 September 1911 repealed the decrees of ’88, ’89 and ’94, elevated the old Inspectorate to Central Management (called general only with the decree of 20 June 1912), established three general inspectorates based in Tunis, Cairo and in Thessaloniki, he created a central council at the ministry, established that the staff of the middle schools could pass into the roles of the schools of the kingdom from which they were to be drawn, confirmed for abroad, with the necessary adjustments due to local needs, the medium programs and primarî in force in the kingdom. Government schools in 1910 were 94 with 17,045 pupils, subsidies 702 with 63,112 pupils. With r. decr. 20 June 1912 it was established that the regional inspectors would stay in the place intended as the seat of the office, in the premises of the Consulate. The inspectors were also given the vice-presidency of the school deputation of their residence, while the presidency rested with the consul. The R. decr. 2 October 1913 transformed the regional inspectors into central offices and attributed the competence of their appointment to the Foreign Minister. Their headquarters were fixed in Rome from where they could be commanded to reside abroad. The central inspectorate was abolished by decree law of 7 December 1919. Inspection duties could from time to time be entrusted to professors or officials with reconfirmable annual duties. The R. decr. 19 April 1923 also suppressed the Central Council of Italian schools abroad,
The R. decr. July 15, 1923 reorganized the whole structure of the schools abroad, correlating the programs with those implemented in the kingdom with the Gentile reform. The subsequent measures intended to extend abroad the legislative provisions issued by the Fascist government in favor of the schools in the kingdom and to pay the life of the colonies more strongly around the schools, gave an unexpected increase to our cultural institutions.
In December 1929 the General Directorate of Italian schools abroad and that of Italians abroad merged into a single Directorate General under which the Secretariat of Italian Fasci Abroad passed. New schools sprang up almost everywhere on the initiative of the government, the fasces, Dante Alighieri , institutions and lay and religious associations, reconciling local needs and program requirements, but also keeping the physiognomy of those systems that are typical of culture unchanged. and of Italian civilization.
