At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th centuries, in Italy, new teaching aids appeared in primary schools, and in Normal schools for the training of future primary school teachers. These aids were the anatomical “clastic” sheets produced by Paravia Turin, i.e. a series of paper sheets with movable parts (flaps), designed to aid in teaching the fundamentals of anatomy during hygiene lessons for primary school children and girls, and which only recently have received attention by Italian researchers. The report presents the initial findings of a research project that reconstructs the stages in the appearance and evolution of these objects, and the comparison with similar objects appeared in other countries. A careful diachronic analysis of historical series of catalogues, combined with a diachronic comparison between the catalogues and coeval aids (and still preserved in schools, museums, or libraries), reveals that these objects were innovative in the Italian context. A comparison, in fact, with similar objects appeared in the same years in other countries, such as England, France, the United States, Spain, Italy, Germany and others, reveals a strong resemblance to these items. A category of 'travelling objects' emerges consequently, revealing a complex web of scientific, commercial, and industrial relations centred around England and France. This led to a dense network of translations and adaptations of these objects being exported worldwide by the most technologically advanced industries, which had full control of the outstanding European and international trade channels. In this scenario, the emerging Italian school industry has been dominated for over twenty years not only commercially and technologically but also scientifically and culturally by northern European countries such as France and Germany. These countries, in fact, are credited with the origin of 'clastic' aids, which in the 19^th century were intended for the training of future medical and para-medical professionals, as well as for the popularization of anatomical knowledge among non-specialist readers.

During the last twenty years the Italian educational historiography analyzed the handing down channels of the colonial, racist and fascist ideology in the school context focusing on the study of contemporary manuals (Ascenzi, 2009; Gabrielli, 2015), the progressive militarization of the school in the Thirties (Bottoni 2008, pp. 321-365) and the colonial writings of students (Bottoni, 2006, pp. 125-151, Montino 2007, pp. 193-216; Morandini 2019, pp. 381-406). Less known are some heterogeneous extracurricular books (Gabusi, 2014, pp. 283-319) used for the Fascist culture courses addressed to boys from 10 to 14, firstly enrolled in the Opera Nazionale Balilla and later in 1937 in the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (La Rovere, 2018, pp. 19-38). Those courses were mostly devoted to the colonial culture, after the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and the Declaration of the Italian East Africa Empire (AOI in Italian) in the following year. This contribution aims at analyzing publications still ignored by scientific literature to reconstruct the fascist colonial school culture (Julia, 1995, pp. 353-382). Namely, the whole of «practices, rules and speeches that regulated the real working of formal education institutions providing an important access code» (De Fort, 2014, p. 45). Therefore, it is possible to reconstruct the real fashion of the school as «it flows from books, notebooks and teaching materials» (Chiosso, 2011, p. 457). It was in the imperialist and racist education of the new generations that the nature of the fascist state was fully reflected, interpreted as a totalitarian educator (De Giorgi, 2008, pp. 184-216) influenced by the «connection, becoming closer during the Fascist period, between scientific theories and the formulation of the fascist racist ideology» (Capristo, 2011, p. 243). Therefore, school played a fundamental role in the creation of the «new fascist man» (Gentile, 2002, pp. 235-264) and showed to be more and more attracted by international events that would contribute to enact the imperialist policies (Collotti 2000, p. 363). Between 1936 and 1939, before Italy entered the Second World War, racism became in school the «main subject, able to subsume in itself all the others» (Gabrielli, 2023, p. 288). In this educational work of a state racism, promoted by Fascism, starting from the special legislation for AOI in 1936 (Labanca 2002) and peaking with the racial laws against the Jews in 1938 (Sarfatti 2020), was particularly active the National Fascist Institute of Culture (Longo 2000; Gregor 2005, pp. 165-190), founded in 1925 under the chairmanship of Giovanni Gentile and turned, in 1937, into the National Institute of Fascist Culture (INCF in Italian). In the following years, the publications of the INCF were willing «to illustrate the grounds of imperialism, colonialism and corporatism» (Albertina 1982, 912). The aim of this work is to demonstrate how the use of the volumes published by INCF and other private and public institutions, in the formal education context par excellence, contributed to the creation of a «colonial school», intended as a varied whole of educational institutes and agencies favorable to the colonial expansion (Deplano 2015, p. 20).

Through the lens of enactment in Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 2005; Law, 2009), this paper examines the enactment of the Chinese national language experiments in Taiwan’s elementary schools in the 1950s. It focuses on how and what elements participated together in enacting a series of experimental practices that constitued Chinese coloniality. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Chinese national language was a spiritual symbol and nation-building panacea for the Chinese nation. After China’s defeat in the first Sino-Japanese War in 1894, unifying languages to be a national language was proposed as a crucial way to rejuvenate the Chinese nation (the Qing dynasty) and build a new country (the then Republic of China, ROC). A series of language reforms were thus promoted and enacted, including specifying key linguistic elements and standards, formulating plans and policies, editing language materials, stipulating language teacher training courses, training language teachers, and revising elementary and secondary Mandarin Chinese curricula. These practices constituted the National Language Movement in China, which lasted around fifty years. In 1945, with the arrival of the ROC, the Chinese national language as a primary means of re-Sinicizing Taiwan was promoted in Taiwanese society and schools. After being colonized by Japan for fifty years, Taiwan, in terms of its linguistic background, was very different from the provinces in China. For Taiwanese children whose spoken languages were Japanese and Taiwanese languages (Minnan, Hakka, or indigenous languages), the national language could be seen as a foreign language. In addition, due to outdated national language textbooks and teaching methods and a lack of qualified language teachers and resources, such as copper molds for printing Chinese characters with phonetic annotations, the national language education at elementary schools was not satisfactory. In other words, these elements did not facilitate the national language project. However, with the groundwork of the Chinese National Language Movement in China, the National Language Promotion Committee in Taiwan reformulated the National Language Movement's goals and guidelines for Taiwan. Also, with the support of elementary schools, it conducted experiments on national language teaching and materials in the early 1950s. The experiment gained positive results, enacting the reforms of materials, teaching, and curriculum, including teaching phonetic symbols (i.e., Bopomofo or Zhuyin) through speaking in the first 12 weeks in the first grade with correspondent textbooks, formulating curriculum standards for phonetic symbols, and revamping textbooks. These reforms laid the foundation for Taiwanese children’s learning in the higher grades, such as Mandarin Chinese language and literature, Chinese history, geography, and citizenship, which constituted the Sinicization project and enacted Chinese coloniality.

In the post-media society, digital media have become an integral part of everyday life, developing an increasing interconnection between virtual and real environments.The Italian scientific debate has focused on the topic of media education, especially after the pandemic emergency. Historically, in Europe, were of particular relevance the pioneering studies of Len Masterman, who, in 1980 in Great Britain, drew attention to the importance of using the new technologies within school contexts through appropriate educational support aimed at both students and teachers. In Italy, in 1998, at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore was the first master’s degree in media education. Although the rise of technologies has been accompanied by an optimistic belief in the possible reduction of social inequalities, these have profoundly affected on access to digital resources, exacerbating and transforming the gap between information haves and havenots. In Italy, the most discriminating factors affecting the use of new technologies are educational qualifications and the discrepancy between north and south. A research conducted by ISTAT (National Research Institute), in the 2020-2021 school year on a large sample of student in lower and upper secondary schools, showed that the elements of inequality in digital access are attributable to socio-economic variables. This has caused difficulties for many students from central and southern Italy to lesson distance learning, in particular for the absence of a technological tool or an unstable internet connection. This paper aims to highlight the main pedagogical orientations in Italy on the issue of the digital divide with specific reference to the education and training paths of adolescents. The focus will be on technological advancement and the iatrogenic effect related to some segments of the youth population’s processes of exclusion and social marginalisation from the digital community. The latter is understood as a group of people technologically literate in the information society, able to use the new media to promote their cognition, find effective answers to complex problems and able to do this critically. Specifically, the paper aims, starting from a review of the scientific literature, to identify possible paths of educational and training intervention that encourage a real and sustainable turnaround. “Is it possible to think of a technological advancement that promotes social inclusion?” And if yes, “in what way?”. These are the questions the paper aims to answer.