Gaetano Salvemini and university: social, cultural and educational thought on Italian higher education in the first half of the Twentieth century

Abstract

Among Gaetano Salvemini’s writings on education, the few, yet precious interventions concerning Italian university should be fully rediscovered. They are witnesses of both Salvemini’s ideas on a crucial element of his political and social thought – the selection and quality of Italian elites – and the attitude towards their profession of the generation of Italian scholars and intellectuals that flourished at the very beginning of the Twentieth century.

In my essay, I am considering three articles that fully show Salvemini opinions about three major points of a general idea of university: the role of a well-developed professional higher education for the promotion of social mobility and the selection of a less “parasitical” ruling class, especially in Southern Italy; the strong correlation between quality and rigorous selection which characterized the idea of higher learning shared by Italian university professors at least until the 1960’s; Salvemini’s contribution to spread the fascination for the US higher education system as the emerging model mass higher education in Italy after his return from the anti-fascist exile.