A treasure trove of antique books, diaries, manuals, magazines, and school notebooks that tell more than a century of education and teaching. The Museum of Education preserves more than 6400 volumes!
The book collection is enriched by some rare and antique editions including two precious first editions of Montessori and Froebel. The volumes then document some moments in the history of children’s literature, schoolbooks, and textbooks. From primers to Latin syntax, from supplementary books to calligraphy manuals, from exercise books to anthologies, from atlases to literature compendiums, from expurgated classics to geometry textbooks published in Italy from Unification to the present day.
Also of great interest to teachers in training are the numerous teaching guides and pedagogy manuals published from the Unification to the late twentieth century. Some antique books have been digitized as part of the project ‘Education and Instruction Between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries‘ in Phaidra. The museum is also regarded as an archive, preserving valuable handwritten documents from various donors and educational institutions, both public and private.
The collection of notebooks and educational papers boasts about 6000 pieces mainly relating to the period 1870/1970. It is one of the most important collections on a national level also present in the portal, currently being implemented, FISQED (Italian Historical Funds of notebooks and educational papers) promoted by INDIRE (for consultation see https://www.indire.it/progetto/fisqed/).
The collection of school documents boasts about 1500 report cards and diplomas relating to all schools – public and private, from elementary to university – mainly dated between 1870 and 1950. The most consistent nucleus is of local origin, but there are many of national origin.
The Museum’s archive preserves significant personal and institutional collections such as
- the papers of Giovanbattista Carron (partisan commander, professor of philosophy, headmaster, deputy, president of ONAIRC)
- the teaching archives of some elementary school teachers (Lauretta Gennari, Elisa Garbo Furlan, Wanda Vignaga Naccari, Tina Favaron), serving in Padua and Rovigo in the post-war period.
- documents of Giuseppe Bruzzo, Superintendent in Vicenza between the two world wars.
- registers and various documents of the Institute for Abandoned Children of Padua (1915-1938)
- various documents from schools or welfare institutions