IMMEDIATE PROBLEM

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 13 January 1944, Page 2

IMMEDIATE PROBLEM

REVISING FASCIST SCHOOL BOOKS PRESENT ONES FULL OF PROPAGANDA It is reported that the Allied Commission now working out the revision of Fascist textbooks preparatory to the re-opening of Italian and Sicilian schools has found the job even more difficult than expected. This will not surprise anyone who saw Italian school books under Mussolini’s regime, says a writer in the Melbourne “Age,” for they are so deeply interpenetrated with propaganda for Mussolini and for war that tile commission can have hardly any alternative but to discard them and start again. The Fascist party took education very seriously, and the books produced for the elementary schools were remarkably good, especially when compared with those in use in pre-Fascist days. They were beautifully designed, illustrated and well suited to their purpose as school books; the propaganda element in them was so cunningly worked in as to be unobtrusive, yet all-pervading. The Commission is going to be very hard put to it to produce better books. It will not do to return to the old style; while so much of the Fascist material is tainted that it will not be possible to reproduce the existing text books with the propaganda left out. BLACKBOARD PROPAGANDA The first book which Italian children in all schools were compelled to use was the Sillabario, or first spelling and reading book. It begins with the vowels, and is illustrated by a vigorous little picture of a small child writing the Fascist war cry “Eia” on a blackboard. The child, of course, is dressed in the appropriate Fascist uniform. The propaganda element in the first book is not overdone, although some of the most brilliant designs in the book are directly intended to shape the young Italian mind to acceptance of the regime, and to urge acceptance of military duty. Patriotism and love for Mussolini are linked, as in the design which shows a beetle-browed Duce being saluted by a child; on the opposite page children ar e shown saluting the flag. The legend under the picture explains that love between the children of Italy and the Duce is quite mutual. Th e Sillabario contains 112 pages. It is intended to give religious as well as secular instruction About one-third of the material is either direct propaganda for the regime or is unsuitable for the present purposes of Italian education The books for the first and second grades are even more striking. Few school books can compare with them for their excellent design, colour and attractiveness. The second book in particular, illustrated by the artist Mario Pompei, is brilliant. It is thoroughly amusing, and done with a real sense of the fun of life. The pictures are modern, even modernistic, but extraordinarily attractive. Here again the Allied Commission will have difficulty. It would be a thousand pities to sacrifice these books. But to use them as they stand is impossible, and to use them at all may be undesirable. Yet the task of getting better ones in a hurry will be formidable. DISTORTED HISTORY In the second book, some history is taught, mostly by way of comment on particular festivals, like the anniversary of the March on Rome (28th October) and others. The history is crude, but it has its point. The children are taught that Mussolini and his Black Shirts simply arrived in Rome and drove out the “bad Italians,” and that was that. So on this day, the story goes on, you make a paper flag and hang it from the window. One particularly brilliant design drives home the lesson of obedience. The story goes that a wise man was asked to explain the first duty of the child. He said “Obedience !” And the second ? “Obedience !” And the third ? “Obedience !” It is noteworthy that, although religion is given a prominent place in the school books, as it was .given in the school life of Italy after 1929. the sections given to it in the books are notably less brilliant and less attractive than those given to propaganda for the regime. Other school books, over which the State exercised the most rigorous supervision. are full of the same tendencies. History was rewritten by the Fascists to give a completely false impression of the whole of the nineteenth century and of the Risorgimento in particular. Cavour. Mazzini arid Garibaldi are made to appear as forerunners of Mussolini. The events of the Great World war period are outrageously distorted. and no alternative view is anywhere expressed and no correction of those deliberate falsifications was possible. Philosophy, which is an important element in the curriculum for high schools, was equally turned into propaganda and similarly distorted. All these text books will have to be scrapped. Few of them are worth serious consideration. The task of the Allied Commission will be not only negative, but positive. They will have to find people who can do fair and reasonable work again, after nearly 20 years of slow mental poisoning. Those who have lived all their lives in an atmosphere of freedom and open discussion can form little idea of the abysmal ignorance of the ordinary Italian, who has been fed on a diet of lies most of his life. It is too much to expect that Italian teachers will suddenly and overnight be able to catch up with all that has happened since the lights went out in Italy in 1922.