Mathematics Education for Young Women and Girls from the Birth of the Kingdom of Italy (1861) to Fascism

Abstract

In 1861, when the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, the school system of the new state was organized in a highly centralized manner based on an 1859 law inherited from the Kingdom of Sardinia. This law, which with some changes regulated education in Italy until 1923, included the principle that the first two years of primary school should be compulsory for both boys and girls. A later law in 1877 reinforced this principle and led to more regular school attendance by girls, although, as the documents cited in this article show, the prejudice that literacy was unnecessary or even dangerous for women remained for many years. In elementary school curricula there were differences between math content aimed at females and that aimed at males. In secondary schools, math programs were not differentiated by gender, but for a long time access to these schools was difficult for girls. After elementary school, however, there was the teacher-training school called scuola normale (normal school), where girls could enroll. The math syllabuses were the same for boys and girls. In this article I focus on this type of school with the aim of understanding what math the girls encountered and how they reacted to it. As sources for my study I use answers to questions published in Italian mathematics journals addressed to students.