The Gentile Reform of 1923 was a reform of the Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 educational system

Education in Italy

Education in Italy is compulsory from 6 to 15/16 years of age, and is divided into five stages: kindergarten , primary school , lower secondary school , upper secondary school and university...

 through a series of normative acts (royal legislative decrees of 31 December 1922, n. 1679, 16 July 1923, n. 1753, 6 May 1923, n. 1054, 30 September 1923, n. 2102 and 1 October 1923, n. 2185), by the neo-idealist philosopher Giovanni Gentile

Giovanni Gentile

Giovanni Gentile was an Italian neo-Hegelian Idealist philosopher, a peer of Benedetto Croce. He described himself as 'the philosopher of Fascism', and ghostwrote A Doctrine of Fascism for Benito Mussolini. He also devised his own system of philosophy, Actual Idealism.- Life and thought :Giovanni...

, minister of education in Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

's first cabinet. It officially recognized 21 universities in Italy.

Results

• The compulsory age of education was raised to 14 years, and was somewhat based on a ladder system: after the first five years of primary instruction, one could choose the scuola media, which would give further access to the "liceo" and other secondary instruction, or the avviamento al lavoro, which was intended to give a quick entry into the low strata of the workforce.
• Gentile created the liceo classico
  Liceo classico
  Liceo classico is a secondary school type in Italy. The educational curriculum lasts five years, and students are generally about 14 to 19 years of age....
  
  (intended to be the peak of secondary education, with the goal of forming the future upper classes), the only secondary school that gave access to all types of university. Gentile also created technical, commercial and industrial institutes.
• Instruction in languages other than Italian was abolished, which affected mainly the German language schools in South Tyrol
  South Tyrol
  South Tyrol , also known by its Italian name Alto Adige, is an autonomous province in northern Italy. It is one of the two autonomous provinces that make up the autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. The province has an area of and a total population of more than 500,000 inhabitants...
  
  , and Slovene and Croatian language
  Croatian language
  Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
  
   schools in the Julian March
  Julian March
  The Julian March is a former political region of southeastern Europe on what are now the borders between Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy...
  
  .

Sources

• G. Tognon, Giovanni Gentile e la riforma della scuola, in Il parlamento italiano, Milano, Nuova Cei, 1990, vol. 11