«Frugando fra le carte». I fondi documentari dell’Istituto «Pasquali Agazzi»: fonte per una storia dell'educazione infantile in Italia fra ’800 e’900

Since the early 20th century, Italian pre-school education has been strongly influenced by the work carried out in Mompiano, near Brescia, by the sisters Rosa and Carolina Agazzi under the guidance of their leader and guide Pietro Pasquali. At the ‘Pasquali-Agazzi’ Institute in Brescia, founded in 1964 with the aim of giving lasting testimony to that pedagogical experience, many materials are held that document the work of these three protagonists of the history of education in our country and the important developments of the following years and up to the present day. After describing the main stages in the work of this experiment in education during the twentieth century, the essay gives an account of the archival and documentary material still preserved at the Institute in Mompiano. This material in part still requires ordering and suitable archiving in order to give renewed impetus to the training activities already carried out by the Institute in favor of secondary and university students and, at the same time, to promote greater public awareness of developments in child care during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.