The pedagogical function of totalitarian aesthetics: the fascist school and the celebration of the First World War in Italy. The case of Turin

ABSTRACT

The school, also from the architectural and the furniture point of view, is undoubtedly a cultural product typical of every historical period. During Fascism, the school carried out the task of training the citizen-soldier, lover of the country and obedient to the wishes of the “duce”. Using massively the art and the beauty, the school has assumed a central role in the fascist State, being charged with the transmission of a national identity based on the cult of those who had died for the construction of the united Italy. Art, in all its forms, but especially the architectural and plastic ones, has been cleverly used in the twenty years of fascism as a tool for the transmission of a pedagogy of death and war, considered essential for the “new Italian”. The essay investigates the mechanisms with which the totalitarian fascist aesthetic has been applied in the schools of Turin in the years of the first post-war period, covering an unavoidable part - albeit unsuspected for many - in building the consensus.

Keywords:
Pedagogy; Totalitarian aesthetics; Fascism; World War I; Scholastic architecture