ASILO, DIRITTO di. — It is the right of immunity acquired by one who, guilty or in conflict with the authority administering justice, takes refuge in a sacred place or beside a sacred object. The place itself is called a. (from the Greek word šōwōxē, “inviolable”), precisely to indicate its inviolability.
The custom, privilege, or law by which persons or things were protected in certain places from any possibility of arrest offered defense to the individual and represented a corrective both to the barbarous tradition of blood revenge
and, at the same time, to the legislation of the State. It was widespread among the Semitic peoples and particularly among the Jews. The idea of justice inherent in man had been transformed into that of vengeance, exercised by the family of the slain; in order to correct excesses and distinguish culpable homicide from accidental and provoked homicide, the Mosaic Law established the right of a. and designated six cities where those guilty of involuntary bloodshed (qui nolens sanguinem fuderit) could find secure refuge while the trial against them was being conducted (Ex. 21, 13-14; Num. 35, 6 e 11-34; Deut. 4, 41-43). The benefit of a. was also extended to citizens of another nationality or religion; excluded from it were those guilty of offenses such as theft, adultery, and so forth. The guilty person remained in the a., even if found guilty, for one year or until the death of the high priest, so that hatred might subside in people’s hearts and he might thereafter enjoy his freedom without restriction.
In Egypt too, especially during the Hellenistic period, there is evidence concerning the right of a., which rulers granted to places of worship. In the third and second centuries B.C. it seems to have been reserved for certain “first-class” temples, such as that of Memphis. Later it was extended more liberally, perhaps because the dynasty intended to win the favor of the inhabitants. The privilege, much prized by the priests because it enhanced the status of their temple, also extended to an adjoining area established in each individual case and marked by limestone stelae placed “to the four winds.” Severe penalties were imposed on transgressors. The strategos was required to supervise observance of the royal decree.
In Greece this right was widely practiced; but while at first most temples enjoyed the privilege, because of the abuses that resulted it became necessary to regulate and restrict the right itself, which in the classical period was already limited to a few temples. The a. (ἀσπύλῳ) could be requested by any criminal or unprotected individual (slave, insolvent debtor) and lasted as long as the refugee remained within the sacred precinct. Athenian legislation, however, excluded those condemned to death.
After conquering Greece and Asia Minor, the Romans initially respected all claims to a. asserted by temples and cities; but when disorders and abuses occurred, Tiberius, in A.D. 22, ordered an investigation of the titles on which the privilege was based. The temples whose right of a. was recognized displayed a bronze plaque reproducing the authorizing senatus consultum. The first among these was the temple of Diana at Ephesus.
This right of a., which occupied an important place in Greek and Eastern history, was not admitted by the Romans (cf. also Livy, XXXV, 51), except in the earliest times, as shown by the right of a. attached to the temple of Diana Aventina (Festus, s. V. Servorum dies) and by the rite of succession to the priesthood in the temple of Diana Nemorensis, where the slave who took refuge there became its priest (rex Nemorensis), provided that he had killed the incumbent priest (Ovid, Fasti, III, 971 ff.; Strabo, V, 3). A lesser form of a. was that which slaves, debtors, and criminals found by taking refuge at an altar or before an image (cf. examples in Plautus and Terence), so much so that among the meanings of ara there is also that of refugium. Servius (Aen., II, 761) states that the right of a. was limited to those temples that had it written into the lex dedicationis.
Christianity claimed for its churches and for the cemeteries surrounding them the privilege enjoyed by the sanctuaries of the East. The causes that had given rise to a. in pagan temples had not disappeared with the triumph of Christianity; indeed, they had perhaps increased, because it was precisely then that a long period of turmoil and barbarism began.
As regards its origin, it is presumed that the institution of the right of a. was first introduced in practice and then sanctioned by law, perpetuating itself on the basis of the ancient privileges of pagan temples, especially those of the East. Since Greek Egypt had numerous such a., and Western Christianity had frequent contacts with Christian Egypt, it is not improbable that Egypt is the place where the origin of Christian a. should be sought. Numerous and characteristic similarities are found even in the measures delimiting the areas of immunity (the bull of Nicholas II of 1059) and in the stelae that, in Christian a., are replaced by the four crosses (termini salvationis) fixed at the four cardinal points.
From as early as the fourth century, Christian churches were places of a.; numerous testimonies to this are provided by St. Ambrose and Ammianus Marcellinus. In 392 a law of Theodosius I introduced certain limitations; but in 399 the right of a. was legalized by the Council of Carthage. Initially it was probably limited to the church; in the constitution of 21 November 419 the privilege was extended fifty paces beyond the basilica doors, and in 431, by an edict of Theodosius and Valentinian, to the cloister and the land enclosed by II.
The right of a. in Christian churches differed from the common right of a. in pagan and Eastern religions, because respect for the place and the divinity was joined by “charity,” to which religious and clergy in particular are bound; it was also connected with the power of intercession recognized in bishops on behalf of those who had taken refuge “in ecclesiam.”
In barbarian times, in the Germanic kingdoms, since the right of a. could not be admitted absolutely, violation of the right of sanctuary was prohibited, but the culprit had to be handed over after a solemn oath had been sworn that he would not be condemned to death; thus capital punishment was often commuted to a fine. The Council of Orléans of 511 established the same provision, and the Decretum of Gratian (c. XVII, q. IV) incorporated this measure, which prescribed excommunication for violators. Other provisions are contained in the decretals of Innocent III (c. 6, 10, X, de immunitate ecclesiarum, coemeterii, et rerum ad eas pertinentium, III, 49).
From the churches, the right of a. gradually extended to the houses of bishops, cardinals, princes, and ambassadors, becoming secular as well; the abuses that resulted made apparent the absurdity of a privilege extended so broadly. In the seventeenth century, while awaiting more favorable times for limiting or abolishing local immunities, attempts were made to devise procedures reconciling ecclesiastical claims, sovereign rights, and the demands of public order. These proposals helped lead to the drafting of laws and concordats. It was secured that certain categories of offenders would be excluded from immunity, but the principle of local immunity was always maintained by the Church. The constitution Apostolicae Sedis of 12 October 1869, § 2, art. 5, punished violation of the right of a. with excommunication latae sententiae, reserved to the Pontiff. This provision was not reproduced in the current CIC, which nevertheless preserves the principle of the right of a. intact in can. 1179: “Ecclesia iure asylli gaudet ita ut rei, qui ad illam confugerint, inde non sint extrahendi,
nisi necessitas urgeat, sine asensu Ordinarii, vel saltem rectoris ecclesiae”.
In England, where the first mention of the right of asylum is found in a code of laws promulgated by King Æthelberht in A.D. 600, the admission of fugitives into churches was regulated by numerous conditions, and the right itself was restricted to a specific number of churches, reduced by Henry VIII in 1540 to seven. Restricted by James I in 1623 insofar as those responsible for crimes were concerned, it was subsequently (1697 and 1723) abolished in civil matters as well.
In France, where it had been restricted by an edict of Francis I in 1539, it was abolished with the Revolution. In Germany its definitive abolition took place only in 1780.
In Italy the right of asylum was abolished by the Siccardi Law of 9 April 1850. The Concordat of 1929 did not properly restore it to force; but it prescribes, in art. 9, that “except in cases of urgent necessity, the public authorities may not enter, for the exercise of their functions, buildings open for worship without having first notified the ecclesiastical authority.” A broader immunity is recognized by art. 22 for the Roman basilicas of S. Giovanni in Laterano, S. Maria Maggiore, and S. Paolo, not by virtue of the right of asylum, but as a consequence of the extraterritoriality enjoyed by them together with other papal properties.
Noemi Crosturosa Scipioni
ASILO D'INFANZIA. “That the education of man should begin from earliest childhood is a requirement that can be perceived throughout the entire history of pedagogy. From Aristotle to Quintilian, from the educators of Humanism to Comenius and Rousseau, to mention the principal figures, all think that the education of the child would be seriously compromised if provision were not made for it from the tenderest age. However, nurseries, properly so called, are, one might say, an entirely modern institution, appearing in Europe toward the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. This does not mean, however, that throughout the history of education and educational institutions one cannot record pedagogical needs and initiatives intended to gather children up to the age of six or seven years in suitable premises, both to supervise them more effectively and to provide them with some instruction. There is no need here to point out how the care of childhood is, in many respects, a product of Christianity; not that in the ancient world children were not cared for and loved, but only Jesus raised children up to himself, exalting their purity and innocence. “Whoever welcomes one of these little children,” says Jesus, “welcomes me” (Mt. 18:5). Thus, as early as the Middle Ages, we can find good examples that testify to the particular care Christians devoted to the education of children. In 787 the priest Dateo founded in Milan a hospice for poor children, which lasted until 1456. In this hospice the youngest were cared for by wet nurses, while the older children were taught singing and elementary knowledge. Other benefactors of children did not fail, as the years passed, to found other institutions of this kind, such as s. Girolamo Milani in the first half of the sixteenth century in Venice and other cities; s. Giuseppe Calasanzio in Rome and its environs in 1597; and the priest Lorenzo Garaventa, who founded a hospice for abandoned children in Liguria in 1770—not to mention the work carried out in Paris by s. Vincenzo de' Paoli around 1638 and that in Rome of Tatu Giovanni, as the charitable Roman mason Giovanni Borghi (1732–98) was commonly called. Among his other felicitous insights, Comenius in the seventeenth century also conceived a genuine nursery school, “schola materni gremii,” whose task was to impart, in simple form and through sensory intuition and games, the first elements of moral and religious life and the first rudiments of knowledge (cf. O. Cicogna Argentini, s. V. in Dizionario delle scienze pedag., Milano 1929). The prevailing notion that the first education belongs to the mother had the consequence of preventing the emergence, until the threshold of the modern age, of a genuine school organization capable of gathering and educating children up to the age of six. There is no doubt that in many families the education of young children was rendered impossible by the fact that the mothers, either because they were incapable or because they were occupied throughout the day with work, often outside and far from their homes, were unable to care for their children. Abandoned to themselves, the latter were forced to live more in the street than in the home and were naturally exposed to all the bad examples that could come to them from II. To avoid this, custodial rooms arose here and there in the various countries of Europe; while seeking to prevent one disadvantage, however, they created others, because these tender creatures were generally gathered in rooms that were not always hygienically suitable, confined in cramped surroundings and at narrow desks, and supervised by personnel who were not always properly trained—who, even if competent in supervision, were not so in education.
To find in Europe a nursery that at the same time had both an assistance and an educational purpose, we must arrive at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. The first genuinely educational undertaking was founded GOBELIN (v.) of Strasbourg, a Protestant pastor who, with the collaboration of Luisa Schepler (1763–1837), established, as early as 1769, several nurseries in the villages of his parish of Waldersbach, entrusting their care to women, peasants from the villages themselves, who had nevertheless been previously instructed in the task to which they were being called. The first nursery was inaugurated in 1771. Gradually, they spread throughout the various villages of the parish. In these nurseries the children were taught singing and elementary notions of history and geography; episodes from the Bible were read to them, and they were trained in simple handicrafts. The women sat among the children, entertaining them with tales and little stories, organizing their games, guiding them in the construction of paper objects, and also showing them pictures, animals, and plants. Oberlin proceeded from the principle that children should be spoken to only about things that fell within the scope of their senses. The children’s lives, moreover, were to take place, insofar as possible, in the open air, so that they would always be.
possible to enjoy and observe nature in its various phenomena. The children, moreover, through contact with the teachers and in their mutual relations with their companions, were to learn the ways of behaving properly in society and were to become accustomed to overcoming the dialect in order to speak the national language.
Another philanthropist to whom the foundation of a. at the beginning of the nineteenth century is Owen (v.), who in 1800 established in his cotton mill at New Lanark the first of his a. (“infant schools”) for children from the age of two onward, and subsidized those educational works which seemed to him to contribute to promoting the progress of the people. Owen was led to found the a. by the fact that many of his female workers, in order to attend to their work in the factory, were forced to leave their tender children unattended at home. Owen’s institution, born therefore of a humanitarian motive, subsequently took on an entirely educational purpose. No religious instruction was given in Owen’s a., so that, according to Owen, children of all religious confessions could attend II. In order to prevent children from committing improper acts and to lead them to acquire the habit of courtesy and goodness, the children were kept under continuous supervision. In Owen’s a. learning was intuitive. Owen, who had visited Pestalozzi’s school, wanted children to learn about bodies and their qualities by being shown objects or models of them. In Owen’s a., conversations were conducted in a family-like manner so that they might contribute more effectively to learning. Play was cultivated as recreation and pastime. In Owen’s a., however, as later in Aporti’s, the teachers were unable to free themselves from the use of books and from instruction of an erudite character; consequently, at a certain point Owen felt the need to entrust (1815) the a. to one of his workers, Giuseppe Buchanam, who, by his good disposition and intelligence, had better than the others understood the nature of the institution and its purposes. Buchanam, who loved children, resolved through love for children many problems of infant education which, outside the teacher’s love and sacrifice, can with difficulty find a solution. Buchanam was later (1819) sent to London, where he opened the first a. and, immediately afterward, a school for the training of a. teachers. Owen’s method was perfected by another apostle of infant education, Samuele Wilderspine. Meanwhile, the institution took root in England, where a society for a. d'i. was established, and their number rose to 200. In the Infant Schools, as, for that matter, in all analogous institutions in Europe before Fröbel, there generally persisted the defect of being somewhat too concerned with instruction, to the detriment of education in the proper sense. This was a defect that an Italian, Pietro Giordani, was to notice when, writing in 1844 to Nicolò Puccini, he observed that the purpose of a. is “morality, not vanity,” and that through them it is a question of making “the poor little children good,” “not of making them doctors, or rather parrots, by loading and oppressing those still closed intelligences with the most vain and useless chatter.”
The initiative of Oberlin and, above all, that of Owen did not remain without imitators, and it may be said that in every part of Europe and in various countries of America, especially during the first half of the nineteenth century, there was a rush to establish a., which took various names, such as Salles d'asile in France, Scuole guardiane in Belgium and Denmark, Bexar School in Holland, Infant Schools in England and the United States of America, and amole and a. d'i. in Italy. In addition, infant institutions were not lacking in Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Portugal.
The French Salles d'asile may initially be considered an offshoot of Owen’s schools, although they later departed from them by placing some limits on the instruction to be given to children. The first a. in Paris was founded by Pastoret (1766–1843), who promoted a women’s committee for the establishment of Salles d'asile, sending one of the directresses to England to visit Buchanam’s institution and study its method. Another Frenchman of the same period, Cochin, mayor of the twelfth arrondissement of Paris, undertook to study Buchanam’s method and supervised the translation of the Ma-
manuale per le educatrici; he also opened a model a. with an attached course, directed by Millet, for the training of teachers. After visiting the infant schools, Millet wrote a book, Observations sur le système de l'École d'Angleterre pour la première enfance. She proposed the need for a spacious hall and a large courtyard, the latter rich in plants useful for observation. She wanted instructive conversations to be held in the a. and silence to reign there. Sacred songs were performed in chorus; the children were to imitate collectively the gymnastic movements performed by the teacher. The alphabet, numbering, and the abacus were sung. This latter defect was later transferred to Italy and lamented in our a. The salles d'asile did not always fulfill the purposes for which they had been established, chiefly because of the teachers’ lack of preparation. Since they lacked a sound general education, they were unable, during the three months of attendance at the training school, to acquire the competence required for their office. Maria Pape Carpentier (1815–75) attempted a reform of the method adopted in these a. by recommending lessons that were easy, brief, and intuitive. In France, even after all the European experiments, the Salles d'asile never freed themselves from the defect of being, in effect, schools that overloaded children’s tender minds, incapable of bearing it, with a burden of knowledge: reading, writing, history, natural history, geography, and arithmetic.
Italy, although later than the French and English examples, nevertheless did not fail to establish and promote the institution of infant asylums, whose foundation Aporti (v.), who in 1827 founded the first asylum in Cremona, admitting children from well-to-do families between the ages of two and six; and on 24 January 1829 he established a fee-paying infant school, placing the Cremonese don Alessandro Gallina at its head. Toward the end of 1830 Aporti was able to open the first free asylum, admitting 34 children between three and six years of age; in 1833 he opened an asylum for girls and, in 1834, at S. Martino dell'Argine, the first rural infant asylum. In a short time the Aportian institution spread throughout Italy, especially central and northern Italy, arousing broad support and opposition everywhere. The entire liberal movement became an advocate of the new institution, which nevertheless did not fail to arouse suspicion in certain sectors of Italian public opinion. Thus, for example, Count Della Margherita in Piedmont feared that the asylums were educating the children of the people to become indifferent to religion; and at first (17 August 1837) a circular from the Holy Office prohibited the introduction of asylums into the Papal States, although immediately afterward (27 November 1837) another circular clarified that infant schools introduced long before were not prohibited in general, since there were such schools in Rome itself, in accordance with approved regulations; rather, it prohibited specifically those justified in the circular (La Civiltà Cattolica, 1928, I, p. 387; III, pp. 229–30). With the accession of Pius IX to the papal throne, infant asylums were founded in Rome and in other cities of the Papal States through private initiative, and in 1847 the prefect of the Congregation of Studies wrote to the bishops urging them to promote the foundation and development of such asylums. After the fall of the Roman Republic, the asylums continued their existence. In Venetia and Lombardy, in Piedmont and Tuscany, infant asylums spread widely, supported by educators, pedagogues, politicians, and philanthropists, who made them one of the causes of the political struggle they were waging in other fields. In Florence the institution of the asylums was promoted, among others, by Lambruschini, who saw in them “the germs of that union between classes, of that alliance between poor and rich, between nobleman and plebeian, of that fellowship of ideas, affections, and actions which make human beings a true society.” In Pisa and Livorno, Luigi Frassi, Matilde Calandrini, and Enrico Mayer, all Protestants and friends of Lambruschini, supported the institution and contributed to the foundation of asylums. In Piedmont the asylums found supporters among men of the liberal movement, including Camillo Cavour and Carlo Boncompagni (1804–80). In July 1837 the first Piedmontese asylum was founded at Rivarolo Canavese by Maurizio Farina, a friend of Aporti; and a year later (24 August 1838), a petition signed, among others, by Farina himself, Camillo Cavour, Cesare Alfieri, and Carlo Boncompagni was addressed to the king of Sardinia, seeking permission to establish a society of infant schools. The petition, personally opposed by the aforementioned Count Della Margherita, was personally approved by the king in 1839, with the provision, however, that the care and education of the children be entrusted to religious congregations. In connection with the institution of asylums in Piedmont, one must also briefly recall the work undertaken by Carlo Tancredi Falletti, marquis of Barolo (1782–1838), and his wife Giulietta Colbert de Manlevrier (1785–1864), who attempted to open an asylum in 1825 and succeeded fully in doing so in 1829, as Silvio Pellico testifies, inspired by the salles d'asile of Pastoret, which the marquises had visited in Paris. Barolo, who had a realistic view of asylums and their function in the early formation of children, published in Turin in 1832 a pamphlet, Sull'educazione dell'infanzia nella classe indigente. Brevi cenni dedicati alle persone caritatevoli. Barolo wished the management of the asylums to be entrusted to nuns, because of the spirit of sacrifice that such a mission requires; for this purpose he founded the Congregation of the Sisters of Providence, later called the Sisters of S. Anna. Other asylum institutions were also established in Piedmont: in 1833 Countess Eufrasia Valperga Masino opened an asylum in her palace in Turin, and in 1838 Charles Albert himself opened another asylum in the vicinity of the Royal Palace, entrusting its direction to the Sisters of S. Anna.
In Naples every attempt to establish the institution of asylums remained, one might say, fruitless, because of the opposition it encountered from the government. Giacomo Savarese complained of this state of affairs when, writing to Vieuxseus on 10 June 1840, he had to observe that the asylums were confronted with “every possible obstacle that the most senseless and foolish indifference to the public good can place in the way of a useful innovation.”
In Sicily, too, the prince of Scordia made an attempt to open asylums, but it remained fruitless; they could be established only in 1860.
After the political failure of 1849, the asylums declined here and there, but the seed had been sown and could not fail to bear good fruit. Once national unity had in fact been achieved, infant asylums grew throughout Italy, extending also into the territories of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the former duchy of Modena, where the institution had been least able to take root. In the year 1871–72 there were in Italy 1,009 public asylums alone, with 130,806 enrolled children. Meanwhile, reform had become necessary in the infant asylum. Essentially, despite its various aspects, the institution had a common foundation, identifiable in the concern to engage the tender minds of children in acquiring an education, which cannot be the entire purpose of such an institution. Although play was valued and given considerable attention, it remained merely recreation and pastime, rather than an act—the sole act—of the child’s life. Federico Guglielmo Augusto Fröbel successfully undertook a reform of the method used in infant asylums. From the doctrine of Pestalozzi, whom he visited at Yverdon, he drew the profound conviction of the child’s freedom, which is manifested wholly in play as the intimate act of his life. Human nature is realized through doing; and in play, which is one mode—the only mode—of the child’s doing, the child places himself at the center of his world and experiences it as his own creation. Through his activity he becomes a creator and, therefore, imitates and can come to know God, the creator of all things. The child’s life is also expressed more fully in contact with nature; consequently, the Fröbelian institution would be based in a garden and would in fact be called Kindergarten. Fröbel’s kindergartens spread rapidly throughout the various countries of Europe. In Italy the Fröbelian method encountered the Aportian method, certainly helping to attune it more fully, psychologically, to the nature of the child.
The baroness Berta di Marenholtz Bülow (1810–93) became an advocate of the Fröbelian method; in various works she explained the master’s thought and indicated play as the occupation most suited to the different stages of children’s development, also affirming the need to initiate the child into work as the best means of developing his artistic spontaneity. After Fröbel’s death, Marenholtz went to London, Paris, Belgium, and Switzerland, everywhere disseminating her master’s ideas and promoting the establishment of kindergartens. In Italy, interest in kindergartens was not lacking; indeed, SACCHEGGIO (v.) studied the new method, while the educationalist Ab. Rayneri was sent abroad by the Piedmontese government, around 1858, at Aporti’s proposal, to visit several kindergartens and report on them—as he did—to the Sardinian minister of P. I. at the time. A few years later (1863), Gaetano Cammarota travelled to Switzerland, on behalf of the Italian government, to visit the two kindergartens existing there, one in Geneva and the other in Lausanne. In 1869 the priest Carlo Uttini (v.) successfully experimented, in his infant school in Piacenza, with certain procedures of the Fröbelian method suitably adapted to the Italian mentality. Around 1870, kindergartens received considerable impetus in Italy, above all through the fervent work of Adolfo Pick (v.), Bohemian by birth but Italian by choice, who became an advocate of the Fröbelian method in Italy. In Venice, in 1871, he inaugurated the «Vittorino da Feltre» kindergarten, from which some of the finest kindergarten teachers of the period also emerged. Again in Venice, in 1868, Mrs Adele Levi della Vida had founded an a. d’i. in which teachers were also trained. But during the final years of the preceding century, the Fröbelian kindergartens gradually became almost rigidly fixed in a formal mechanism that seemed rather to hinder than to promote the spontaneity and freedom of children; consequently, at the beginning of the century, the a. was reformed, chiefly Agazzi (v.) and Maria Montessori (v.), the latter with her Case dei bambini, and the former with the Nuovo a. di Mompiano (Brescia), assisted effectively by Agazzi’s sister Carolina and by P. Pasquali, director of the schools of Brescia. To the Fröbelian principle of the child’s activity, Agazzi added the necessity of placing the child in a position to act, reducing the school to an essential moment of life, indeed to a genuine act of life, expressed above all in work. The entire world of reality replaces the mechanical Fröbelian world: the reality that the school itself presents through contact between child and children, between them and the teacher, and with the environment. It is a school that becomes society and therefore a practical and moral act. Montessori’s method, as Montessori herself sets it forth in her two works, Il metodo della pedagogia scientifica applicato all'educazione infantile nelle case dei bambini, Città di Castello 1909, and L'autoeducazione, Rome 1917, is based on the «freedom» and self-education of the child, virtually guided by the teacher through a suitably proportioned environment (children’s houses), where the child can «polarize his attention» and discover for himself the errors involved in using the various objects, the «material» prepared for this purpose (fittings, cut-out letters, etc.). The Montessori method was often interpreted in a naturalistic sense, that is, in the sense of Rousseau; but it is instead capable of correct interpretation and application also in religious instruction (cf. M. Montessori, I bambini viventi nella Chiesa, Naples 1922), as Father Mario Barbera maintains (Le case dei bambini e il metodo Montessori, Rome 1927, and in La Civiltà Cattolica, 1919, II, 37, 219, 430; 1922, IV, 451; 1930, II, 238). The State intervened in the organization of a. in Italy, first through the Ministry of the Interior and later through the Ministry of P. I., prescribing, by R. D. of 1 October 1923, no. 2185, a legal qualification for kindergarten teachers, following a three-year course at the «School of Method», as well as the curricula for the «preparatory level» or «maternal school»: religion, prayer, religious hymns, spontaneous drawing, recitation, gymnastic games, hygienic habits, simple manual-work exercises, gardening, rudiments of general knowledge, and the correction of popular prejudices and superstitions.
There should also be recalled the infant schools of Montesca and Rovigliano, founded by Alice and L. Franchetti for the children of farmers—schools in which the cult of nature prevails and where the children practise gardening and field work; and the a. attached to Giuseppina Pizzigoni’s Scuola rinnovata in Milan, where, while gardening is practised, care is taken to promote the development of the children’s spirit of initiative and self-discipline. Another initiative is Rina Nigrioli’s a. d’i. at Portomaggiore (Ferrara), where nature is experienced in the manner of Pascoli, through outdoor games, cultivation of the fields, etc. Outside Italy, DEWEY, JOHN (v.) in the United States DECROLY, OVIDE (v.) in Belgium should be recalled. Dewey’s kindergarten is founded on the children’s instinct for association and activity. Decroly aims to prepare the child for life by creating for the child himself a natural, non-conventional environment, so that there may be no gap or discordance between school and life.
From 1870 onward, the a. d’i. in Italy progressively increased both in number and in attendance. Thus, whereas in 1881–82 there were 2516 a. in Italy, with 243,972 enrolled pupils, and in 1901–1902, 2314 a. with 355,594 enrolled pupils, in 1921–22 there were 3902 a. with 397,610 enrolled pupils, rising by the year 1941–42 to 10,633 a. with 755,489 enrolled pupils (cf. La politica e la legislazione scolastica in Italia dal 1922 al 1943, Milan 1947, pp. 422–23). For rural a.,