Civilisation and the Italian school toilet: insights for the cultural history of education

ABSTRACT

The term “toilet” conveys different meanings; it may be seen as an isolated place or a public service, a secluded and dirty area or a symbol of civilisation and progress. In the film The Phantom of Liberty (1974), Luis Buñuel presented a formally dressed social group gathering over a meal in toilets around a table, with the eating of food being presented as a private function. In this way he challenged moral and societal standards acquired in the long “civilizing process”, to quote Norbert Elias (Norbert Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation: soziogenetische und psychogenetische Untersuchungen [Basel: Verlag: Haus Zum Palken, 1939]), demonstrating the toilet’s association with bodily functions and manners but also concomitant with social and sexual behaviour, shame, and repugnance. This article explores conceptual issues regarding the toilet as a key sanitary feature of the school environment, and intersecting aspects of physical and moral education in its pedagogical role. It draws on a select range of primary sources dating between 1827 and 2019, with critical perspectives on their interpretation. Sources are primarily administrative or discursive commentary for the earlier period, but include personal memory, and literary and cinematic representation for more recent times. Rather than presenting a narrative of progression, this collection of sources provokes questions of meaning and significance of toilets in school, mostly in Italy but with some comparative references. It seeks to engage with both an educational “hygienic turn” of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the processes of mass education associated with the acquisition of good manners. The toilet is considered in its transversal connotation (temporal as much as spatial) connected with ideas of rest and privacy. Reflecting the physical, conceptual and educational place of the school toilet in history of education, it touches on hygiene and well-being of pupils, the control of (their) bodies, and the modernisation of school buildings.

KEYWORDS:

• School toilets
• Italy
• hygiene and well-being
• gender
• space and time

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the reviewers for their valuable comments on the previous version of this essay. I would like to thank Robert Beveridge, Corinne Doria, Jane Prince, and Caterina Sindoni for their supportive observations on the manuscript. I also want to express my gratitude to Geert Thyssen for his suggestions in elaborating the argument. Without the encouragements and the accurate and depth revisions of Peter Cunningham this article would have never been here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Oxford English Dictionary online (accessed April 29, 2020).

² Quoting Escolano: “The material structures of the school are, in the new cultural history of teaching, a record for the reconstruction of education’s past, a kind of empirical archive where the traces of the pedagogical culture of a particular period have been registered”: Agustín Benito Escolano, “The School in the City: School Architecture as Discourse and as Text,” Paedagogica Historica 39, no. 1 (2003): 53, doi:10.1080/00309230307462.

³ The most luxurious lavatories of the Victorian period were opened to the public on 7 August 1889 in London, at Piccadilly Circus. These underground toilets were equipped with 27 urinals and 12 toilets for males, for females 5 water closets. According to commentators at the time this type of plant was an assured economic speculation. Besides fulfilling an important hygienic-social function, they were a source of income as users were charged an entrance fee. The cost for accessing the service, not commonly applied to men’s urinals, allowed local authorities to select users, guaranteeing access for members of the wealthier social classes. This implied a moral dimension as male urinals were often used for sexual encounters; with a payment system, surveillance of the entrance to and exit from the toilets was guaranteed: Paul Dobraszczyk, Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain: Myth and Modernity, Excess and Enchantment (New York: Routledge, 2017).

⁴ Antoninus Samy, The Building Society Promise: Access, Risk, and Efficiency 1880–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 159.

⁵ S. Gutierrez, “Rassegna delle Riviste. Igiene. Masson. Latrine pubbliche,” Rivista della beneficenza pubblica e di igiene sociale 21, no. 2 (1893): 192.

⁶ Catherine Burke, “Editorial. The Body of the Schoolchild in the History of Education,” History of Education 36, no. 2 (2007): 165–71, doi:10.1080/00467600601171237; Geert Thyssen and Ian Grosvenor, “Learning to Make Sense: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Sensory Education and Embodied Enculturation,” The Senses and Society 14, no. 2 (2019): 119–30, doi:10.1080/17458927.2019.1621487.

⁷ Letter from the director of the normal schools of Catanzaro, Gregorio Aracri to Francesco Pecchenedda. Naples, 19 November 1787, quoted in Caterina Sindoni, “Gregorio Aracri e l’istituzione delle scuole normali nella Calabria Ulteriore attraverso i documenti della Cassa Sacra (1787–1972),” in Itaca. In viaggio tra storia, scuola ed educazione. Studi in onore di Salvatore Agresta, ed. Caterina Sindoni (Lecce: Pensa MultiMedia, 2018), 319–32.

⁸ Shulamith Shahar, “The First Stage of Childhood and the ‘Civilizing Process,’” Paedagogica Historica 32, no. sup1 (1996): 168, doi:10.1080/00309230.1996.11434863 (accessed October 22, 2019).

⁹ Simona Castricum, “Public Bathrooms Are Gender Identity Battlefields. What If We Just Do It Right?,” The Guardian, 3 October 2018, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/03/public-bathrooms-are-gender-identity-battlefields-what-if-we-just-do-it-right (accessed October 22, 2019); Alexander K. Davis, Bathroom Battlegrounds: How Public Restrooms Shape the Gender Order (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020).

¹⁰ Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume I: An Introduction (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 27–8.

¹¹ Anita McConnell, Crapper, Thomas (Bap. 1836, d. 1910), Plumber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/55389 (accessed October 22, 2019).

¹² Wolfang Brezinka, “La pedagogia accademica e la formazione degli insegnanti nell’Impero austriaco (1804–1918),” in La scuola degli Asburgo: pedagogia e formazione degli insegnanti tra il Danubio e il Po (1773–1918) (Torino: SEI, 2012), 3–17; Simonetta Polenghi, “La formazione dei maestri nella Lombardia austriaca,” in La scuola degli Asburgo: pedagogia e formazione degli insegnanti tra il Danubio e il Po (1773–1918) (Torino: SEI, 2012), 45–89.

¹³ Norme pei maestri delle scuole elementari minori tradotte dal tedesco e rese adatte all’uso che far ne devono gli italiani (Milano: Imperial Regia Stamperia, 1827).

¹⁴ Norme pei maestri delle scuole elementari minori tradotte dal tedesco e rese adatte all’uso che far ne devono gli italiani, 95–6. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are the author’s own.

¹⁵ I refer here to the nineteenth century, but it is evident that behaviour in school toilets is an ancient but timeless or eternal theme. In 2017, an article, published in an English newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, reported on the tensions resulting from a particularly restrictive regulation with respect to the use of the toilet during school hours: Nicola Harley, “School Bans Pupils from Spending Too Much Time in the Toilets as Police Called to Rowdy Protest,” The Telegraph, 3 October 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/10/school-bans-pupils-spending-much-time-toilets-police-called/ (accessed October 22, 2019).

¹⁶ For a sensory history approaches to schooling and learning, see Geert Thyssen, “Odorous Childhoods and Scented Worlds of Learning: A Sensory History of Health and Outdoor Education Initiatives in Western Europe (1900s–1960s),” The Senses and Society 14, no. 2 (2019): 178, doi:10.1080/17458927.2019.1619313.

¹⁷ Ministero del culto e dell’istruzione, “Ordinanza del ministero del culto e dell’istruzione del 28 luglio 1875 numero 11318 Colla quale vengono emanate le disposizioni sull’adattamento degli edifici scolastici per le scuole popolari e sull’igiene di queste scuole nella Dalmazia,” Avvisatore dalmata, no. 72 (8 September 1875), https://books.google.it/books?id=taKK3UJUSMoC&pg=PT135&dq=water-closet+scuola&hl=it&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY6vWEk-bfAhWRhaYKHSlzBIEQ6AEIOjAE#v=onepage&q=water-closet%20scuola&f=true (accessed October 21, 2019).

¹⁸ Antonio Santoni Rugiu, Piccolo dizionario per la storia sociale dell’educazione (Pisa: ETS, 2010), 56–8.

¹⁹ Geert Thyssen, “Boundlessly Entangled: Non-/Human Performances of Education for Health through Open-Air Schools,” Paedagogica Historica 54, no. 5 (3 September 2018): 663, doi:10.1080/00309230.2018.1472617. On this theme, see also Roy Lowe, “The Medical Profession and School Design in England, 1902–1914,” Paedagogica Historica 13, no. 2 (1973): 425–44, doi:10.1080/0030923730130205.

²⁰ C. d.r M. [dr. Cesare Musatti], “L’igiene delle scuole. Le latrine,” Igiene infantile. Monitore delle madri e degli istituti nazionali a prò dell’infanzia 1, no. 13 (1 December 1878): 98–9.

²¹ Un insegnante, “I bagni nelle scuole,” Il risveglio educativo, no. 39 (10 July 1895): 288–9, https://books.google.it/books?id=vZ_ZsiG-rKsC&pg=RA1-PA289&dq=bagno+scuola&hl=it&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi3ncfOjubfAhXQ-6QKHY86BVMQ6AEIPDAE#v=onepage&q=bagno%20scuola&f=true (accessed October 22, 2019).

²² Ibid., 288.

²³ Ibid., 289.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Mirella D’Ascenzo, Per una storia delle scuole all’aperto in Italia (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2018); Geert Thyssen, “The ‘Trotter’ Open‐air School, Milan (1922–1977): A City of Youth or Risky Business?,” Paedagogica Historica 45, no. 1–2 (2009): 157–70, doi:10.1080/00309230902746222.

²⁶ Ester De Fort, La scuola elementare dall’unità alla caduta del fascismo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), 257.

²⁷ Ibid., 87.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ E. Morselli, “Differenze secondo i sessi,” Giornale della Reale Società italiana d’igiene I (1879): 94, https://archive.org/stream/giornaledellare02diggoog#page/n108/mode/2up/search/scuola (accessed May 12, 2020).

³⁰ “Sede Centrale di Milano. Processo verbale della prima seduta ordinaria mensile,” Giornale della Reale Società italiana d’igiene I (4 June 1879): 239–40, https://archive.org/stream/giornaledellare02diggoog#page/n266/mode/2up/search/scuola (accessed October 22, 2019). The Royal Italian Hygiene Society (Reale Società italiana d’igiene) was established a year earlier. Guido Baccelli, Emilio e Giuseppe Sormani, Cesare Lombroso, Gaetano Pini, and Andrea Verga – then leading figures of Italian medicine and science – were part of the organising committee.

³¹ The statements of the inspector of Oristano are reproduced in V. Ravà’s Report to the Minister of Education, published in Bollettino del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, 1897–98, XXVII–XXVIII, literally transcribed from Giovanni Masala, La Sardegna e la scuola del popolo (Sassari: Gallizzi, 1912), 23–4.

³² Aldo Sari, “La fabbrica delle scuole elementari ad Alghero. Un esempio di architettura pubblica allo scorcio dell’Ottocento,” in Maestri e istruzione popolare in Italia tra Otto e Novecento: interpretazioni, prospettive di ricerca, esperienze in Sardegna, ed. Roberto Sani and Angelino Tedde (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2003), 337.

³³ Relazione sulle condizioni dei locali per le scuole secondarie in Sassari (Sassari: Tipografia Ubaldo Satta, 1908), 5.

³⁴ Camillo Corradini, L’istruzione primaria e popolare in Italia con speciale riguardo all’anno scolastico 1907–1908: Relazione presentata a S. E. il Ministro della pubblica istruzione dal Direttore generale per la istruzione primaria e popolare dott. Camillo Corradini (Roma: Tipografia operaia romana cooperativa, 1910), 219.

³⁵ Francesca Dello Preite, “Per una prima educazione attraverso il testo unico di Stato,” in La formazione della gioventù italiana durante il ventennio fascista, ed. Hervé Antonio Cavallera, vol. II (Lecce: Pensa MultiMedia, 2006), 144.

³⁶ Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, Vita nuova della scuola del popolo: la Riforma della scuola elementare (Palermo: Sandron, 1925), 178.

³⁷ Maria Zanetti and Enrico Pinochi, Il libro per la prima classe (Roma: La Libreria dello Stato, 1936), 104.

³⁸ Igiene della scuola, 41 min. b/n, 1929, https://patrimonio.archivioluce.com/luce-web/detail/IL3000052063/1/igiene-della-scuola.html?startPage=0 (accessed October 22, 2019). On Istituto Luce and its ideological/educational purposes, see Fiamma Lussana, Cinema educatore: l’Istituto Luce dal fascismo alla Liberazione (1924–1945) (Roma: Carocci, 2018).

³⁹ See the special issue: “Il mito dell’uomo nuovo nel Novecento: l’uso politico dell’educazione,” Annali di Storia dell’Educazione e delle Istituzioni Scolastiche 9 (2002): 15–191; also Sandro Bellassai, L’invenzione della virilità: politica e immaginario maschile nell’Italia contemporanea (Roma: Carocci, 2011); John Champagne, Aesthetic Modernism and Masculinity in Fascist Italy (London: Routledge, 2013); George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 155–8.

⁴⁰ See G. Pagano, “L’asilo infantile di Como,” Costruzioni-Casabella, 150, June 1940, in Eleonora Cassandri, “L’evoluzione dell’edificio della scuola primaria italiana, tra architettura e pedagogia” (Politecnico di Milano. Polo di Mantova, 2014), 48, https://www.politesi.polimi.it/bitstream/10589/103605/1/2015_04_Cassandri.pdf. About epidemiology and public health: Thyssen, “The ‘Trotter’ Open‐air School.”

⁴¹ See Catherine Burke and Ian Grosvenor, The School I’d Like: Children and Young People’s Reflections on an Education for the 21st Century (London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003), 21.

⁴² In his research on resistance theory on subculture formation, school failure, and delinquency, the British social scientist Willis states: “Opposition to school is principally manifested in the struggle to win symbolic and physical space”: Paul E. Willis, Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 26. According to Catherine Burke, “[t]he construction and equipment of the modern school room, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, required the body of the pupil to be seated and contained for long periods of time”: Catherine Burke, “Feet, Footwork, Footwear, and ‘Being Alive’ in the Modern School,” Paedagogica Historica 54, nos 1–2 (2018): 34, doi:10.1080/00309230.2017.1358287.

⁴³ Ivan Silvestrini, Arrivano i Prof (01 Distribution, 2008). Min. 00:12ʹ:46ʹ’.

⁴⁴ Sabina Colloredo, CBCR – Cresci bene che ripasso (Roma: Fanucci Editore, 2014), §4.

⁴⁵ Something similar occurred in many American cities from the 1960s through the 1980s. “Public restrooms became more and more dirty, more and more broken, and more and more abandoned by towns and cities that had installed them in previous decades. Without the presence of paid attendants to supervise them, crime and illicit behaviour – both real and imagined – flourished in abandoned comfort stations and in public toilets”: Davis, Bathroom Battlegrounds, 41. The commercial company “Initial”, a world leader in hygiene services, carried out research in five countries – the UK, France, Italy, Australia, and Malaysia – and evaluated the experiences, preferences, and behaviour of users of public toilets in restaurants, bars, shopping centres, railway stations, and public buildings. The survey showed that “malodour immediately impacts how people behave. Respondents admitted that when they encounter an unpleasant smell they try to get out of the washroom as quickly as possible (88%), which unfortunately results in unhygienic behaviour … including not drying hands (17%). Others admitted to not washing their hands at all, or not using soap”: Initial, “Washroom Malodour: Experiences, Perceptions and Implications of Smell for Businesses,” Initial.com, 2017, https://www.initial.com/assets/content/files/initial-air-care-report-2017.pdf (accessed October 22, 2019), 6.

⁴⁶ Nadine Schwab, Legal Issues in School Health Services: A Resource for School Administrators, School Attorneys, School Nurses (Lincoln: iUniverse, 2005), 256; Annachiara Sacchi Andrea Senesi, “‘Giochi erotici in cambio dell’iPod’ Allarme sesso a pagamento in classe – Milano,” Corriere della Sera, 25 August 2009, Milano edition, https://milano.corriere.it/milano/notizie/cronaca/09_agosto_25/sesso_scuola_teenager_landi_chiavenna_ipod_giochi_erotici-1601699115913.shtml.

⁴⁷ Michel Alhadeff-Jones, Time and the Rhythms of Emancipatory Education Rethinking the Temporal Complexity of Self and Society (London: Routledge, 2016).

⁴⁸ Giuseppe Caliceti, Una scuola da rifare: lettera ai genitori (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2011), 137.

⁴⁹ Massimo Recalcati, “Lessico Famigliare – La Scuola – 04/06/2018 – Video – RaiPlay,” Rai//www.raiplay.it/video/2018/05/Lessico-famigliare-d2a88215-bb83-4ffe-a52a-cacde473165e.html (accessed February 15, 2020).

⁵⁰ About the relation between body and education see thoughts, provocations, and questions offered by Mona Gleason, Pieter Verstraete, Rebecca Rogers, and Inés Dussel in this online History of Education Salon: https://www.ische.org/salon-education-and-body/ (accessed May 12, 2020).

⁵¹ Ellen Key, The Century of the Child (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909), first published as Barnets århundrade (Stockholm: Alb. Bonniers Boktryckeri); http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57283; https://archive.org/details/centurychild00frangoog/page/n11/mode/2up.

⁵² “World Toilet Day 2018 | Nature Is Calling…” http://www.worldtoiletday.info/wtd2018/ (accessed January 11, 2019).

⁵³ Rose George: Let’s Talk Crap. Seriously, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmSF9gVz9pg (accessed October 22, 2019). See also the project WASH (Water Sanitation Hygiene) runs by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: Davis Guggenheim, Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates. Part 1 (Netflix documentary, 2019).

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Fabio Pruneri

Fabio Pruneri is Professor of History of Education at the University of Sassari (Italy). He has published articles in journals such as Paedagogica Historica, History of Education, Bildungsgeschichte. His books include La politica scolastica del Partito Comunista Italiano dalle origini al 1955 (1999); Oltre l'alfabeto (2006); L’istruzione in Sardegna, 1720–1848 (2011). He has written, and edited Manuale di storia della scuola italiana (2019). He is Principal Investigator of the Research Projects of National Relevance “Literacy and Development in Southern Italy from Italian Unification to the Giolittian Era (1861-1914)”.