Building Nationalist and ideological identities through textbooks. A compared iconography between Mexico and Italy (1930-1941)

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29351/amhe.v1i2.238

Keywords:

History, education, comparative, iconography, ideology, Mexico, Italy

Abstract

In the 1920s and 1930s, Italy and Mexico experienced comparable processes of educational centralization. In Italy, the Parliament decreed the obligation of the single State textbook for primary school with the law of November 1, 1928. It was a tool directly intended for teachers that the regime employed to control their ideological fidelity to fascism. In Mexico, the Cardenista reform to the Third Constitutional Article in 1934 decreed that the education imparted by the State would be socialist, would fight the religious fanaticism and prejudice. This gave the State greater control over primary education both in public and private schools, and over the editing and publication of textbooks. In Mexico and Italy, illustrations in the textbooks of the 1930s radiated an explicit ideological content. Through it, governments imposed (in Italy) or suggested (in Mexico) the political guidelines under which the students had to be indoctrinated. The images are loaded with civility, political values and militarism, and their very similar themes are repeated in both countries. Metaphors and symbols are part of artistic language, and also of political language. Historically, the Government has sponsored artists who have shaped political symbolism and national myths (Skinner, 2009). Works of art have been used to elicit feelings that the elites wanted to inspire in the population. The objective of this paper is to explore how the illustrations from the textbooks produced in Mexico and Italy contributed to promote modern processes of state formation and nation building, also showing its isomorphism in the educational field.

Author Biography

Marco De Luca, Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas, Cinvestav, Unidad Coapa, Ciudad de México

Es licenciado en Ciencias de la Educación, Universitá della Calabria, Italia (2008), y maestro en Formación de Formadores, Universitá degli Studi di Torino, Italia (2011). Ha trabajado en programas de inclusión de jóvenes y adolescentes migrantes y en la prevención de conductas de riesgo en la ciudad de Colonia, Alemania (2012). Ha sido docente en la Universidad Motolinía del Pedregal (Curso de Integración Grupal, 2015), Ciudad de México.

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Published

2019-01-07

How to Cite

De Luca, M. (2019). Building Nationalist and ideological identities through textbooks. A compared iconography between Mexico and Italy (1930-1941). Anuario Mexicano De Historia De La Educación, 1(2), 117–129. https://doi.org/10.29351/amhe.v1i2.238