Maestri “speciali” alla Scuola di padre Gemelli. La formazione degli insegnanti per fanciulli anormali all’Università Cattolica (1926-1978)

[Autom. eng. transl.] The volume, fitting into the history of special pedagogy, reconstructs the historical background of the School for the preparation of the abnormal teaching and assistant personnel, started by Father Agostino Gemelli in 1926 at the Catholic University of Milan. Among the first of its kind in our country, the School was the training place for thousands of Italian elementary teachers, here prepared for the delicate task of educating children with deficits. The research takes into consideration the period between the year in which the School was founded and 1978, characterized by important changes in the setting of the courses and in their aims, which were linked to the process, started on a national scale, of inclusion of the disabled in the common schools and the formalization of the figure of the support teacher. To shed light on the Milan experience, the analysis of its protagonists, teachers and learners, as well as the disciplines and teaching styles adopted in it, played a central role during the survey. If the study on the Milan Orthophrenic School allows us to probe an issue still subject to scarce historical-educational attention, or that of the training of "special" teachers, it also allows us to shed light on the contribution of Father Gemelli to the early twentieth century pedagogy, reconstructing at the same time a part of the history of the University founded by him and now never deepened.