Teaching aids continue to play a crucial role in facilitating students’ learning, communication, and independence. Their widespread adoption in schools began between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, driven in part by industrial advancements that enabled mass production and greater accessibility of educational materials. In the Kingdom of Italy, school regulations mandated the availability of teaching aids through Royal Decree No. 5724 of 1888. This decree required schools to provide students with the necessary tools for studying all subjects while also allowing—or in some cases, obligating—teachers to compensate for any deficiencies with their own resourcefulness and creativity. Due to the chronic financial struggles of educational institutions, many teachers became inventors, designing and crafting their own teaching aids to enhance lessons. The term elementary school originally referred to its role in teaching the fundamental “elements” of knowledge. Until 1963, when the unified middle school system was introduced, elementary education was the only compulsory level of schooling. As a result, subjects that are now part of higher education—such as chemistry and physics—were once included in early education, alongside disciplines like hygiene. The specific subjects taught often depended on individual teachers and their personal collections, which might include minerals, fossils, rocks, or textiles. However, elementary school curricula varied based on location. Schools in urban areas and those in rural settings often had distinct approaches to education and used different teaching materials. In rural schools, manual work was closely tied to agriculture, blending agrarian theory with practical knowledge of farming tools. Meanwhile, in city schools, manual training focused more on craft-based activities such as carpentry.
In secondary education, a diverse range of teaching aids was used to support different subjects. Taxidermized animals and plaster models helped students learn about nature, while test tubes, steam engines, and electrical experiments facilitated the study of physics and chemistry. Additionally, models of agricultural tools provided insights into human labour and industry.
The collection of teaching aids is extensive and can be grouped either by the type of learning they aim to promote or by their specific characteristics:
- Aids for learning letters and words (alphabets, nomenclature posters, etc.)
- Aids for learning numbers and shapes (abacuses, fraction boards, rods, geometric solids, measures of capacity, weight etc.)
- Aids for learning about nature (scale models and stuffed animals, mineral collections, herbariums, zoology and botany slides and posters, etc.)
- Aids for learning the laws of physics and chemistry (test tubes, steam engines, electricity experiments, etc.)
- Aids for learning about space (geographical maps; globes, city views, etc.)
- Aids for learning history (wall paintings with historical scenes, synoptic tables, etc.)
- Aids for learning about human work (agricultural tools, product samples, etc.)
- Audiovisual aids (from magic lanterns to school projectors, radios from the 1930s distributed during Fascism to those from the 1960s sent by the Ministry of Public Education, hand-cranked gramophones to those assembled by technical school students, slides to records, etc.). The collection also includes about 800 “educational” films produced in the 1950s, mainly by the publishing house La Scuola of Brescia, whose film archive has since been destroyed.
- Aids made by teachers (various collections, drawings on white or slate paper, etc.). These are important materials produced directly by teachers, sometimes “copying” and sometimes “anticipating” industrial production.
- Author’s aids (Froebel’s gifts, some Montessori materials, boxes related to the Decroly method, Freinet’s school printing press, etc.)
- Aids in the form of games (geographical bingo, syllabic bingo, figurines, etc.)
The collection of stationery includes folders, pencil cases, pens and nibs, bookmarks, inks and more.
If you book a visit to the Museum you can see strange aids and motionless animals!