TEACHING FRENCH BETWEEN FASCISM AND DEMOCRACY. AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION AND DIDACTICS OF FRENCH AS FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Abstract

Knowledge of languages in Italy and the possibility of accessing content conveyed in a foreign language is still lower than the European average (Rapisarda, 2015). It seems that the historical root of this anti-democratic situation and in contrast with the growing multiculturalism that characterizes our post-modern societies, can be traced back to the fascist school and the ideological representations on foreign languages that were conveyed in that period. It is, in fact, a common opinion that the Gentile reform (1923), the School Charter (1939), the Bottai law (1940) and De Vecchi law (1943) contributed to a worsening of language teaching compared to the previous period. In this paper the interest is to understand the origins of this trend, but also the methods and concepts conveyed, starting from the twenty years of fascism, regarding the teaching of languages and, in particular, of French language. To do this, two paths will be followed: the first concerns a historical-pedagogical approach and the second a linguistic and historical-epistemological approach. The growing fascistization of culture and education during the twenty years of Mussolini's regime also had consequences on the teaching of languages in the school. Through ministerial laws, programs and a comparison with the school publishing of the period examined (Mandich, 2002), the fascist government's approach to language education in schools is investigated, towards which it had an ambiguous and inconsistent strategy of intervention (Balboni, 2009). Thanks to an investigation into the teaching of the French language, it emerges that fascist school policy wasn’t so unitary and that the political will for autarky aimed at eliminating foreign languages sometimes found support but other times obstacles in the new tools of cultural diffusion and of propaganda (Rapisarda, 2015). Through a linguistic and historical-epistemological perspective (Chevalier, 1968; Coffey, 2021) we want to examine the discursive traces on the forms and symbolisms of domination, the foreigner and colonialism (Bhambra et al. 2018). These traces are to be found in the grammar books of the French language published in the period from 1920 to 1945 (Malfatti, 1929; Gerace, 1932; Caricati, 1944) as the grammar books show an ideological state apparatus, that is to say that they represent an essential tool in the practice of power (Althusser, 1970). Grammar books, through mechanisms of denotation, connotation and supernotation, become the totalizing place of the different expressions of the language and represent a practice linked to certain social contexts (Chevalier, 1976). To reflect on linguistic education starting from a historical-educational research on the French language during fascism offers new tools of understanding and new educational strategies to address the current crisis of the democratic cultural model.