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«History of Education & Children’s Literature», III, 2 (2008), pp. 305-335 ISSN 1971-1093 (print)/ISSN 1971-1131 (online) © 2008 eum (Edizioni Università di Macerata, Italy) The «Fascist reclamation» of textbooks from the Gentile Reform to the School Charter of Bottai Roberto Sani Introduction The following work proposes not only to examine more closely the state of research and to offer a clearer picture of the more recent and significant histo- riographical discoveries in the matter of school publishing and textbooks in the twenty year Fascist period, but also to throw light upon certain research trends and directions, which in some way or another have already begun or which must be held present, with the aim of deepening and integrating the knowledge which we already have at our disposition. School textbook publishing is perhaps the field which has undergone the most intense and productive development1 in the last decade with regards to studies on the history of Italian schools between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Furthermore, with reference to the results obtained, it is the field which has allowed us to redefine, and at times to completely overturn, a series of generalisations and stereotypes inherited from preceding school historiogra- 1 See A. Bianchi, La storia della scuola in Italia dall’Unità ai giorni nostri, in L. Pazzaglia, R. Sani (eds.), Scuola e società nell’Italia unita. Dalla Legge Casati al Centro-Sinistra, Brescia, La Scuola, 2001, pp. 499-529; M. Galfré, L’editoria scolastica dell’Italia unita nella storiografia. Bib- liografia, «La Fabbrica del Libro. Bollettino di storia dell’editoria in Italia», 7 (2001), 2, pp.
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