Struggle and health. Sociability and literacy in the “150 hours” courses in Turin

Abstract

Throughout the years of the reforms, Turin’s political and trade union organizations succeeded in collecting and combining the requests coming from people’s workplace and everyday’s life to develop new models of social governance of schools and social services. All this was realized by reversing the responses given to social discomfort and suffering through a re-appropriation of spaces and a growing participation of citizens in all the social choices. This contribution aims at reconstructing the initiatives and experience of the courses of the so-called “150 hours school” in the years 1974-1978: in this period, the training on prevention on women’s health was carried out in middle schools and in university seminars, and it was open to male and female workers. These training started a process of awareness, active citizenship and representation that – from the collegial bodies of the schools to the newly born local councils, up to the factory councils – brought into question and “in motion” parents, school staff and new residents and workers.