L’istituto «Pasquali- Agazzi» di Brescia: per una storia dell’educazione infantile in Italia fra ’800 e ’900

Italian and international history of infant education has been strongly influenced, since the beginning of XX century, by the teaching method of Pietro Pasquali and the two sisters Rosa and Carolina Agazzi. So, the “Pasquali-Agazzi” Institute was founded in Mompiano (Brescia) to remember this particular educational experience. In this Institute there are a lot of historical documents that offer powerful evidence of the relations between these three educators and their work in favor of popular education. They gave importance to popular education because they thought it could be a form of social redemption since childhood and on, this concept, they founded a cultural and civil project that is valued and applied still today. The “Pasquali-Agazzi” Institute preserves a precious historical and educational heritage that, if valorized, could have a big potential for the whole community, in particular for students, teachers and researchers. These sources, in some cases unpublished, are also an important moment of reflection on the educational, social and cultural usefulness of childhood educational institutions between the XIX and the XX centuries. In addition, the rich collection of teaching aids can offer to the national and international academia valuable ideas for reflection on the daily life of educational and didactic experience in Mompiano infant school and interesting research lines about the history of material culture in infant schools in those years.