Enrichetta Chiaraviglio-Giolitti
Enrichetta Chiaraviglio-Giolitti was an Italian philanthropist, educational patron and activist. Born in Florence, she was the oldest daughter of five-time Prime Minister of Italy, Giovanni Giolitti. An astute and intellectual woman, she was his confidant and correspondent although they did not always agree on policy. Interested in improving children's education in Italy, she worked with several associations and on commissions to study and create curricula. She was a supporter of the Italian educator Maria Montessori and persuaded Margherita of Savoy, queen of Italy, to become a patron of her schools.
After serving as temporary superintendent of the Scuola professionale femminile "Margherita di Savoia" in 1910, she founded the Istituto di San Gregorio al Celio. The institute taught childcare to mothers and trained schoolteachers as in-home health visitors and inspectors. In 1912, concerned with the plight of street urchins, she put forward the idea of refitting a derelict ship as a floating school to Pasquale Leonardi Cattolica\
Early life and family
Enrichetta Giolitti was born in 1871 in Florence, Italy, to Rosa and Giovanni Giolitti. Rosa was the daughter of Lorenzo Sobrero, the procurator general of the Court of Cassation in Turin and niece of the chemist Ascanio Sobrero. At the time of her birth, Giolitti's father was working as secretary to the Minister of Finance, Quintino Sella. Giovanni continued to advance in his political career, serving five times as Prime Minister of Italy. Giolitti was the second child born to the couple but her older brother Giovenale died at birth. Her younger siblings were Lorenzo, Luisa, Federico, Maria and Giuseppe. The children were raised in a liberal environment and were encouraged to discuss personal and public affairs. He taught his children to be independent and to follow their own consciences, but emphasized loyalty to Italy and family.Thanks to her acute understanding of politics and human nature, she was her father's favorite child and his confident. Throughout their lives, the two often exchanged letters presenting their views on the political situation in Italy. Giolitti described her philosophy, explaining that she started "for the most part from the concept of what men should be, then from what a government should be, and when you see a government that does not respond to this ideal, you would like to bring it down". Her father, Giovanni, was more pragmatic than his daughter, recognizing that neither governments nor men could be perfect but should strive to be better.
On 14 August 1894, in Cavour, Giolitti married. Mario was an engineer, who had graduated the previous year from the University of Rome. After their marriage, the couple moved to Berlin, where Mario was employed with Siemens. Giovanni joined them for some months in 1895, during a period when he was facing arrest and his government had collapsed. They then moved to Leipzig, where their eldest son Curio was born on 25 June 1897. Three children followed, Tito, Sergio, and Marcella. By 1906, the family had returned to Rome, where Mario was a railway engineer. He worked for the national railway department on the construction of the Genoa and Riviera tramways and was elected as a radical politician in 1909, serving through 1919.
Activism (1909–1929)
Educational reform
Chiaraviglio-Giolitti was particularly keen on education for disadvantaged children. She was an ardent supporter of the Italian educator Maria Montessori. To assist Montessori in opening the Casa dei Bambini in 1907, she and other socially engaged and well-connected women promoted the advantages of Montessori's methods. They persuaded Queen Margherita to become a patron of the school. A wave of anti-Montessori critics emerged after the 1911 conference held to discuss which method of instruction should apply to kindergartens in Italy. The three methods most-widely utilized at that time were designed by the, Italian pedagogs; Friedrich Fröbel, German inventor of the kindergarten system; and Montessori. Both the Agazzi sisters and Froebel advocated learning through guided play, meaning that to meet specific learning objectives, adults directed the activities in which children engaged. Montessori argued that children should be allowed to learn through their normal daily activities, which would lead them to learn reading and writing out of curiosity. At issue was whether or not the nation should endorse early education that introduced reading and writing. in a 1912 interview with La Voce delle Maestre d'Asilo, Chiaraviglio-Giolitti supported Montessori., the Minister of Education, announced that spring that Italian kindergartens would follow Froebelian methods.In 1910, Chiaraviglio-Giolitti was appointed as the temporary superintendent of the Scuola professionale femminile «Margherita di Savoia», when the director resigned. She founded the Istituto di San Gregorio al Celio that same year, which provided educational opportunities for mothers and children, as well as a nurse's training curricula. The school opened in 1911 with the help of politician and others. As women at the time were usually not educated beyond secondary school, the curricula was designed to teach mothers how to care for their children and train school teachers to become in-home health visitors and assist school doctors as health inspectors. In 1912, she was elected vice president of the Associazione pro bambini malarici. The association was involved in national studies to improve the health of children through laboratory research, upgrading of facilities, and training for caregivers in the drive to limit infections of malaria and provide treatment.
Chiaraviglio-Giolitti worked on creating an asylum for orphans, and assisted in the creation of the floating school Caracciolo in Naples, replicating projects on the ships Garaventa in Genoa and Scilla in Venice. The idea of the floating kindergarten was to take in homeless street urchins and provide them with the education and training they needed to become productive citizens. Chiaraviglio-Giolitti met with, Minister of the Navy, and first proposed that an asylum ship should be created for this purpose. She also recommended that the school should be under the direction of Giulia Civita. The pyrocorvet Caracciolo was commissioned by the minister in 1912 and the school was inaugurated in April 1913. As a board member of the Unione italiana dell'educazione popolare and representative of the Ministry of Education, Chiaraviglio-Giolitti was designated to serve as coordinator of patronage for the newly formed Unione Navi-Asilo. Her duties included organizing local committees to promote and manage charitable donations for the Unione italiana dell'educazione popolare to benefit the school ships Caracciolo and Scilla and the Vittorio Emanuele II Orphanage in Porto d'Anzio, which served fishermen's orphaned children. Board members Chiaraviglio-Giolitti, Paolo Boselli,, and Luigi Luzzatti met regularly with the Ministry of the Navy and the Ministry of Education to coordinate the programs. The Caracciolo school operated under Civita's direction until it was terminated by the fascist regime in 1928.
Among other projects, in 1913, Chiaraviglio-Giolitti served on the national commission to reform secondary and normal schools. The Daneo-Credaro Law of 1911 had set forth the need to study and reform teacher training, as there were insufficient and inadequately trained personnel to teach at elementary schools. On the commission chaired by Guido Fusinato were politicians, social activists, teachers, school inspectors, and representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce. Although it was proposed that a women's secondary school be established for girls who did not want to pursue teaching, the commission could not agree on its need. They proposed co-educational normal courses which trained students both in the practical skills for teaching and in pedagogical theory. Chiaraviglio-Giolitti presented a separate report, which although it supported the teaching program in general, recommended making it less didactic and more oriented towards a broader group of students including women, as well as middle- and working-class pupils. Ultimately none of the suggestions were implemented because of a change in the political regime and the onset of World War I.
Faced with food shortages during the war, the women's section of the Società Agricoltori Italiani sent a delegation of women including Chiaraviglio-Giolitti, Margherita Armani, Agnese Celli, Ester Lombardo, Cornelia Polesso, and Emilia Santillana to meet with the Minister of Education in 1919. They pointed out that the approved curricula at that time barred agricultural training and argued that both normal and rural schools should provide such sources to prepare for meeting food requirements. Chiaraviglio-Giolitti expanded the idea to include garden cities, writing to in 1921, of the benefits of raising children in the countryside. She was one of the founders and a board member of the Unione Italiana di Assistenza all'Infanzia in 1923. The organization was designed to act as a network to provide assistance to mothers and children, giving them referrals to available aid from agencies, assisting them with basic child care supplies, providing education on child welfare through visiting nurses or health workers, and establishing connections to government to enact child protection laws and integrate those policies in hospitals, schools, and child care facilities.