Public Language Education for the Working and Middle Classes

In 1888, Luigi Pavia published a pamphlet entitled Sull’insegnamento delle lingue Straniere negli Istituti Tecnici e relativi Programmi ed Istruzioni Ministeriali. In 1906, the text was reissued with the more controversial title Le Lingue straniere negli istituti tecnici e l’eccessivo lavoro scolastico. The first addressed the current legislation and the state of language teaching in technical schools, while the second addressed the teacher's role more specifically. The two pamphlets shed light on a period of change and describe a new scenario for the teaching of foreign languages.

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Italian school system included scientific-technical curricula in which language teaching was a distinguishing feature: while French was studied as part of the literacy requirements at all school levels, English and German were seen as a necessary skill for those involved in business and technology. Rather than addressing methodological issues relating to adults learning diverse languages, or innovative grammars, the documents bring us into a teenage classroom with problems related to age and, in part, their social backgrounds. The students described here are not middle or upper-class learners willing to broaden their view of politics and culture by reading news and books in a foreign language. They are youngsters trained to become artisans and skilled workers.