Education and the Italian Constitution: Roots, Topics and Outcomes

The article aims to provide an overview of the Italian Constituent Assembly’s debate on education, school and teaching. The first part describes the political and cultural roots of the Italian pedagogical debate and the positions expressed in the Assembly by its most significant political and intellectual members. This discussion highlights both the central role played by the resolution of the historical problem of the legal position of confessional
schools in Italy, and the influence that this theme had on the possibility to deal with many other related aspects. The second part of the article highlights how the interpretation of the Constitution’s provisions on education illustrates the original weakness of the constitutional compromise.