Physical Education for Italian School Children during the Totalitarian Fascist Regime

Abstract

Recent general and educational historiography suggests that, under Mussolini, physical training was viewed as a key instrument for disciplining children’s ideas and values as well as their bodies, and thus for inoculating them with fascist ideology. In this essay, I trace the evolution of the regime’s totalitarian educational project in relation to the teaching of physical education in primary schools, a novel topic and heuristic perspective that has been typically overlooked by historiographers. To this end, I analyse national legislation, school curricula, ministerial circulars, and teachers’ manuals and journals, examining developments in physical education for school-age children in terms of both its pedagogical or ideological meanings and the teaching methods adopted.