«Pei gruppi femminili e per l’infanzia socialista». Il progetto educativo dei giovani socialisti italiani dalla guerra all’avvento del fascismo

In most of the researches that have dealt with the issue of consent to the war effort on the home front, the contribution of institutions and bourgeois associations in promoting the heroic representation of the nation in arms through a widespread culture of war, involving and invading the public and private spheres, has been highlighted. Less attention has been paid, however, to bottom-up initiatives proposing training and educational paths built on an alternative set of values to that of national-patriotic regeneration. This contribution aims to reconstruct and evaluate, through the debate and the initiatives that accompanied it, the attempt of the militants of the Federazione Giovanile Socialista Italiana (FGSI) to oppose the dominant canon of war propaganda with an antithetical pedagogical practice, with emancipatory thrusts compared to the models imparted by the State, the Church and bourgeois associations, through the establishment of a national network of clubs for children and women of the proletariat. In a longer-term perspective, the challenge would be to 're-found' Europe on a new generation of people educated on the principles of the repudiation of war, social and gender equality, international solidarity and participation.