Decreti delegati and student movement in the 1970s

Abstract

The article investigates the effects of the long Sixty-Eight on Italian schools from the perspective of participation and school policies. By interweaving educational-historical research with research on social conflict, it aims to restore the Decreti delegati to the history of the 1970s, inserting them into the tortuous process of democratization of educational institutions that began in 1968-69. Comparing institutional sources with those produced by the movements restores to us the ambivalent relationship between contestation in secondary education and the ’74 measures. The reform seriously challenged the student movement, which was divided over the choice between participation and boycotting the elections. In February ’75, however, the students poured the ideal carryover of Sixty-Eight into the ballot box. Indeed, the issue of school democracy had its roots there. In the late 1970s, the movements, with their anti-institutional charge, seemed to reject the representative mechanism as collegial management entered a crisis and showed all its limitations.