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Chapter Two
Planning
2.1
The regulatory framework
Since the 1960s, when Mr. Milani said that there was no greater injus-
tice than to “
give equal parts between the unequal
”, the problem of diver-
sifying training programmes to achieve real equality of opportunity
has become increasingly central to a gradually wider group of leaders
and teachers and even today is one of the fundamental objectives of
the autonomous school.
In the 1970s, spurred on by a growing part of the population who
demanded a school capable to guarantee equivalent possibilities of
success, the Delegated Decrees were approved, the Law 517/77, the
Middle School Programmes; the shift was made from programme
schools to planning schools.
Slowly, the idea emerged in schools that, if you wanted to actually
achieve promotion and development of the potential of each student,
it was essential to follow a path of building multiple routes adapted to
different subjects. These routes involved forms of co-operation and
integration between the teachers of the different subject areas and
between the school and the extra-curricular education systems op-
erating in the territory, in order to build a network of appropriate
proposals and motivation for the plurality of students.
The failure to adopt a comprehensive reform restructuring all of
the several orders of studies and the training system of those having
access to education, consented the survival for many years in Ital-
ian schools, particularly in upper secondary schools, of practices an-
chored to a formalistic culture based on the transmission of content;
the evaluation focused on the learner, not on the analysis of the ed-
ucational process.
In the 1970s, however, starting with compulsory education, the de-
bate on the “curriculum” was underway.