Teaching geography after the unification of Italy: a GIS [Geographic Information System] application for the history of education

Textbooks represent a source of exceptional interest for the historian of education and offer useful information on the history of didactics, the teaching of various disciplines, the relationships between adults and children and so forth. Surely the analysis presents itself as more complex than it may appear at first glance. We have interesting data at a local level that can be found in the historiographic production of the pre-unification period or the one concentrated, after unification, on specific and defined territories. It is not easy, however, to have a definite big picture that, as a matter of fact not even the national ruling class had in the years immediately following the birth of the Kingdom of Italy. The attempts to find information, above all statistical, on the adopted books are a testimony of the attempt. Among these attempts, it is very important to mention a survey promoted by Ruggiero Bonghi, public instruction minister during Minghetti’s second term as Prime Minister. To examine the survey’s numerous documents, that is the inspectors’ responses, an analysis of the single documents is not sufficient. We run the risk of losing, in fact, the general picture in which the qualitative analysis also assumes a new and more interesting meaning. This is why I propose a geo-referenced approach, using the great heuristics possibilities offered by the GIS applications (Geographic Information System). It is a field of study (and of methodological research) that in the historical area is still at the experimental state, opened to debate but with interesting perspectives of research.