Today is International Women's Day and in the Greek universe the law on education is passed.
We often think that something we experience in the present, something we think about, something we discuss, concerns only us and the present. We don't know, we don't remember, we don't know... A lot... don't we want to know? Maybe! But many things are rooted in the past, are topical. After all, people's feelings, thoughts, etc. do not always change completely, i.e. there are always continuities and discontinuities.
In my thesis I traced the debate that had been generated in 18th century Italy and in Europe in general because of Enlightenment ideas about the debate between private and public education. In the context of another debate between “the ancients and the moderns” those who advocated private education, a privilege only for the elite and of course only for men, with some exceptions of women, who were educated in seclusion for life and even buried there, in convents or if they had the possibility they received home education. The advocates of private education, for a few, represented the old, the ancients, that tradition was more powerful than anything else and since that was always the way it was done nothing had to change. The other ‘modern’ writers, among themselves and women, noted that education had to be extended to all social classes and also to women, “the other half of the human population”.
In the second half of the 18th century the editor Andrea Rapetti, noted in a note: «I do not wish the labourer and the peasant to become educated, but to use reason, reason, and to speak and judge with reason the things at their disposal, as the nobles do.».
Gaetano Filangeri also noted that in antiquity «the foreigner, the alien, the servant» were excluded from public education, while all other categories of citizens such as «the soldier and the duke, the priest and the judge, from the last citizen to the head of the nation, all must be educated, fed and clothed equally». It was generally argued during this period that progress in the «modern nations of Europe» could only come about through education, and public education at that, as this could be considered modernisation in a state.
That's it! I wrote them to share.
P.S. Link to my thesis:
https://freader.ekt.gr/eadd/index.php?doc=47611&lang=el
Author of the article:
PhD in Modern European History from the Department of History & Archaeology of the University of Athens. She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher on the role of women in the Greek Revolution, at the Department of History & Philosophy of Science of the University of Athens and is working on the research project «The Newspapers of the Greek Revolution (1821-1832)».
