ABSTRACT
In 1907-08 a close friend of Giovanni Giolitti, Camillo Corradini, carried out a survey of Italian education. He drew public attention to the illiteracy and truancy, to the diverse provision in different regions, to the lack of schooling in the countryside, and to the local pressures against improvement. The Italian universities produced each year a steady 1,700 law graduates, 700 doctors and 230 scientists and mathematicians. It was not an impressive achievement for an industrializing society, and it was much less impressive than what was happening in secondary education. It was time for Italy to stop being a museum and become a factory, better still an arsenal. Italian had become a lingua franca in the army and the towns, and perhaps 6 or 7 million people spoke it. A national economy existed, linked by roads and railways. Above all, the State had existed, for good or ill, for fifty years.
