La politica scolastica

For long time the historiographical debate on educative issues has been marked by the ideological polarization due to the political role of the educational system. In postwar years scholars have mostly underlined the continuity of Christian Democratic politicians with the Reform Gentile, downplaying their most progressive elements. The institutional crisis of 1970s and the intense pedagogical debate of those years, together with the difficulties in reforming the secundary school, fostered the development of research, which in the 1980s was able to achieve an autonomous methodology and to emancipate from other disciplines, due the establishment of CIRSE (Italian Centre for the Historical-Educative Research). A turn in the judgments about the behaviour of Catholic politicians was possible starting from 1980s, at the same time of the reformation of the Agreement between the State and the Holy See, thanks especially to the work of Luciano Pazzaglia and due to the encounter among Catholic and lay scholars. Hence the research focus came back to political and institutional processes, after a period of prevalence of social sciences and cultural studies. In the last years neo-Gentilian theses emerged, which tend to downsize the Centre-Left reforms.