The right to punish vs. the duty of education in rural Southern Italy: From Black Pedagogy to the educational counterproposal (1955-1975)

The educational models of the 19th century, shaped around the values of the bourgeoisie, embodied inflexible protocols of restricted behaviour and freedom of expression, in the interests of imposing a uniform culture and value system. Included in this were rigid expectations of submission to the father and the ethics of sacrifice. Beginning in the 1970s, with the conception of schwarze Pädagogik, researchers studied the works of the 19th-century pedagogues at the forefront of maintaining this adult-centric vision, impossibly at odds with the recognition or defence of the specificity and rights of childhood. The process of changing reference models was gradual and demanded pedagogical reflection that would redeem childhood from the conditioning of fundamentalism, false ideologies, and violence. The current essay provides an in-depth study of the educational authoritarianism, or Black Pedagogy, inherent in the home and school environments of Southern Italy, and the educational advancement initiated in the 1950s to 1970s.