Defending Democracy. Civic Education, History, and the Constitution

Abstract

Can we measure Italians’ feelings towards democracy? Giorgio Galli wrote that in 1945 political leaders ‘adapted’ to that form of government, “but they did not invent it [...] that is, it is not their value, it is a value received from others”. Moro asked the constituents that the Constitution be taught immediately in schools to defend the moral values and social achievements of Italians. In 1958, he signed the first law on civic education and entrusted its teaching to historians, but it was not reinforced in the difficult decades that followed. This process can also be traced through an examination of dictionaries written since the 1960s: civic education seems to have become ‘instruction’ entrusted to lawyers and economists. The status of history and the democratic sentiment of Italians are still evident today in the difficulty of educating citizens in the values of the Constitution.