explicitly, the first oratory apostolate of Don Bosco's - a phenomenon which grew in Italy and France and which was responsible for the setting up of several charitable undertakings in the 1870s.

4. Changes in cultural, educational and scholastic areas

The lull in the first decades of the century, especially after 1830, was followed by a gradual interest in culture and schools for the working class. Catechetical activity was placed within the context of remarkable expansion both pedagogical and scholastic, at a European level and also, to a certain extent, at an Italian and Piedmontese level.15

The blossoming of the Romantic movement goes back to the first part of the century; names such as Froebel, Pestalozzi, Fr Girardi and others belonging to the Herbart school of realism, spiritualist in orientation, and later on to positivist pedagogy and teaching. In Piedmont the disputed acceptance of Ferrante Aporti’s kindergartens, begun in Cremona in November 1828, became remarkably evident from the 1930s onwards.

Later on we will mention real or hypothetical contacts between new 19th Century initiatives in the field of education and the youth institutions created by Don Bosco.16

Looking at school organisation, following the Regolamento (Regulations) of Charles Felix (1822), there is a decisive break from the past. This was provoked, in 1848, by the Bon Compagni Law which gave its blessing to a state monopoly in education, thus placing all public education in the hands of the Minister, Secretary of State. The Casati Law of November 13 1859 gave the final approval to the new general structure of public education.17 The breathing space granted to private, non-state schools, was curtailed by the executive board, year after year, in a way that was not legally admissible. Don Bosco himself had experienced this while running his school. But even the progress of the Italian public school system turned out to be very slow and difficult particularly with regard to the elementary schools and schools for the working classes.18

15 Halfway through the century Italy’s population, like that of most of Europe, was suffering from the curse of illiteracy.

Don Bosco however, began his work in Piedmont, the region most literate and amongst the less poor.

16 Cf. A. Gambaro, “La pedagogia italiana nell’età del Risorgimento”, in Nuove questioni di storia della pedagogia, 2,

(Brescia: La Scuola 1977), 535-796; D. Bertoni Jovine, Storia della scuola popolare in Italia, (Turin: Einaudi 1954),

511.

17 Cf. V Sinistero, ‘La legge Boncompagni del 4 ottobre 1848 e la libertà della scuola’, in Salesianum 10 (1948): 369-

423.

18 CF. G. Gozzer et al., Cenni di storia della scuola italiana dalle legge Casati al 198 ( Rome: Armando 1982), 147; D.

Ragazzini, Storia della scuola e storia d’Italia dall’Unità ad oggi ( Bari: De Donato 1982), 276; D. Ragazzini, Storia

della scuola italiana. Linee generali e problemi di ricerca, (Florence: Le Monnier 1983), 132. On the situation in the

years immediately following the Casati Law, cf. meaningful documentation by G. Talamo, La scuola dalla legge Casati

alla inchiesta del 1864, (Milan: Giuffré 1960), Chap 7, 420; a special number of the journal I Problemi della pedagogia

5 (1959) n.1, Jan-Feb is dedicated to the Casati Law of 13 Nov. 1859, which became the law for Italian schools up to

the Gentile reform of 1923.