Vita scolastica e riflessione sull’istruzione nell’opera di Piero Calamandrei

The essay explores several snapshots of school life, which emerge from the correspondence between Piero Calamandrei and his future wife, Ada Cocci, dating from 1908 to 1915, as well as from a few short stories later included in La burla di Primavera con altre fiabe, e prose sparse, edited by Giorgio Luti (Palermo, Sellerio, 1987). Particular attention is also paid to recollections of fragments of parental education provided by Calamandrei’s grandfather, Agostino, in Piero’s Inventario della casa di campagna, published in 1941 by Le Monnier. The second part of the essay analyzes some of Calamandrei’s speeches concerning political interference in scholastic life and the role of the school as a “organo costituzionale.” Palumbo focuses in particular on the speech Difendiamo la scuola democratica, delivered at the Third Congress of the Association for the Defense of the National School, held in Rome on February 11, 1950. First published in the same year in «Scuola democratica», the speech was later republished in the volume Per la scuola (Sellerio, 2008), which brings together three speeches by Calamandrei, with an introduction by Tullio De Mauro and a historical-bibliographic note by Silvia Calamandrei