School Reforms in Austrian Lombardy From Maria Theresa Until Italian Unification

This chapter shows the development of the school policy in Lombardy under the Habsburg dominion, from Maria Theresa up to 1859, when Lombardy was annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia. Recent studies have proved the great results of the elementary school policy: in few decades there was a powerful boost in the opening of elementary schools -also in the Napoleonic age, when Felbiger’s model was still followed. Teacher training, introduced by Joseph II in Lombardy, was greatly improved in the Restoration age, thanks also to the introduction of Peitl’s textbooks and therefore to the diffusion of Milde’s pedagogy. At the eve of Italian unification in fact Lombardy could boast a capillary widespread network of elementary male and female schools, competent teachers, particularly in cities, and many good female teachers. The picture of the secondary school is much less satisfactory, because the Realschule was introduced late and the Gymnasium and Lyzeum remained grounded on the Jesuit model, which had been abandoned by the innovative Napoleonic lycée instead. Neither could the Thun-Hohenstein’s ginnasio-liceo meet the needs of a society economically advanced and eager to be modernized. This chapter highlights the historiographical change that occurred in the last decades that allowed to shed new light on the Lombard school in the Restoration age. The political and religious bias against Austria that for a long time affected the research, focussing it on Italian patriotic educationalists, has been abandoned. The investigation of Vienna’s pedagogy and school policy, and their implementation in Lombardy allows to come to more correct judgements in the history of education.