Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/481

 STATISTICS.] ITALY 461 ill 1878 by the minister of public instruction on the effects of the law, Northern Italy v;is in the most favourable condition, having a much greater proportion of communes than either Central or Southern Italy. While in the north only 383,916 inhabitants- scattered in little groups through the mountainous districts were unable to make use of the existing means of instruction, in Central Italy this was found to be the case, with 1,230,599 (out of a total population of 6.J millions); and matters were still worse in the south. In the central regions 498 of the 1235 communes were un able to enforce the law through lack of the legal number of teachers, and in the southern provinces it would have been requisite to in crease the teaching staff by 1536. The following statistics indicate the extent of the organization for primary instruction in 1879 : l (1) Asylums for children (infant schools) 2 pupils, 183,809 (92,905 boys, 90,904 girls) ; teachers, 3752. (2) Elementary schools : public 35,171 (890,080 boys, 708,227 girls) ; private 6476 (53,479 boys, 80,416 girls). (3) Evening Classes for adults: 11,161 for men, 472 for women ; pupils 439;624 males, 16,063 females, (4) Sunday schools (scuole festive}: 592 for men, 5979 for women ; pupils 5977 males, 21,194 females. Most of the institutions known as asili infant Hi, or infant asylums, are after the Aporti method -forse, says an Italian critic, nn poco froppo scuola c troppo poco asilo; but a certain number are conducted on Froebel s kindergarten system, which was intro duced among the Italians by the baroness Marienholtz-Bulow and George P. Marsh the American minister. The principal institutions for secondary education are the gymnasiums and the lyceums. The former have a course of five years, and the instruction comprises Greek, Latin, Italian, history, geography, and arithmetic ; the latter, with a three years course, add to those subjects philosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and natural history. There are seven masters or &quot; professors &quot; in each lyceum. The pupils enter ing the lyceum are usually from fourteen to fifteen years of age ; they are only admitted on presenting a satisfactory gymna&ial certificate. According to a pleasant custom, the lyceum usually bears the name of some person of national and at the same time local celebrity as the Leopardi lyceum at Macerata, As the gym nasiums and lyceums are too exclusively devoted to what is known as classical education satisfactorily to subserve the necessities of modern life, they have been supplemented by a very considerable number of technical schools, the earliest of which in Italy dates as far back as 1848. No fewer than 43 trade schools were, subsidized by the minister of instruction in 1878-79. Most of the secondary education institutions were intended for boys. In 1861 the muni cipality of Milan founded a &quot;high school&quot; for girls, and their example has met with very commendable imitation. A variety of establishments for female education were of course in existence throughout the country at a much earlier date, but they were organ ized on the basis for the most part of old-fashioned ideas in regard to what was appropriate for women. Such are the so-called conscr- vatorii of Tuscany which were originally purely religious foun dations, and only partially secularized by Leopold I. and the St Mary colleges of Sicily, which have occasioned so much controversy as to whether they are educational or charitable institutions. The Government lyceums and gymnasiums had 18,021 pupils in 1879, the other public lyceums and gymnasiums 11,779, lyceums and gymnasiums attached to the seminaries 11,650, and private lyceums and gymnasiums 7139 making a total of 48,589. For the higher education Italy possesses no fewer than seventeen national universities. They are all of more or less ancient date, except that of Rome, which was opened in 1870, and it is a respect for this antiquity which is in some cases the chief cause of their pre servation. That several of them are of comparatively small import ance is shown by the following figures, exhibiting the number of students or hearers of lectures for the year 1879 : Naples had 2817, Turin 1509, Padua 948, Pavia 672, Rome 648, Pisa 586, Bologna 569, Genoa 480, Palermo 449, Modena 195, Parma 194, Siena 181, Catania 168, Messina 128, Cagliari 95, Sassari 93, Macerata 82. Besides the seventeen establishments there are four free universities, those of Perugia and Ferrara with three faculties each, and those of Camerino and Urbino with two faculties. They are all small, the students for 1879 numbering 65 in Perugia, 60 in Urbino, 46 in Ferrara, and 43 in Camerino. Theology has ceased to be a subject of instruction in the national universities. In 1876-77 there were 3314 students in the faculty of jurisprudence, 2842 in that of medicine, 1257 in that of the mathematical sciences, and 212 in that of philosophy and letters. The univer sity teaching staff consists of ordinary professors, extraordinary pro fessors, and free professors, the last corresponding to the &quot; Privat- docenten &quot; of Germany. A certificate of attendance at a lyceum is requisite for admission as a university student, and candidates are further subjected to a preliminary examination. Among the institutions which cooperate with the universities it is sufficient to mention the institute for the higher studies and the school of the social sciences at Florence, the scientific and literary 1 In the Italian statistics scuola means rather class than school. 2 There is no statement of the number of these asylums or schools. academy of Milan, the upper technical institute of Milan, the en gineering schools at Naples, Rome, and Turin, the veterinary col leges at Milan, Naples, and Turin, the royal school of commerce at Venice, the royal school of medicine and surgery at Naples. As an indication of the extent to which such a list might be carried, we may take the department of agricultural training. Here we have agrarian institutes and farming colleges at Rome (1872), Castelletti near Signi (1864), Motrone in the province of Lucca (1874), Macerata (1868), Cosenza (1870), Grumello del Monte near Bergamo, Brescia (1876), Brusegnane near Padua (1872), Pesaro (1876), Palermo (1819), Caltagirone (1868), Brindisi (1872), Lecce (refounded 1879), &c. ; and many of these establishments have considerable pieces of land for the purpose of practical training. The Middle Calabria school of agriculture (1876) is also a school of pasto ri~ia or shepherd craft. An Istitttfo forcstaJc was started at Vallombrosa in 1869, and in the eight years (1872-1879) it has sent out eighty-three licentiates of forestry. The school of &quot; viticulture and enology,&quot; or vine-grow ing and wine-making, at Conegliano dates from 1876 ; it publishes a llivista di Viticoltura. A school of zootechnia and cascilicio, or the principles of cattle-breeding and cheese-making, exists at Rrggio Emilia ; and at Palermo there is a special school for the art of sulphur-mining. In 1879 about 2,000,000 lire were devoted by the Government to the encouragement of art. Art schools exist at Bologna, Car rara, Florence, Lucca, Massa, Milan, Modena, Naples, Parma, Ravenna, Rome, Reggio Emilia, Turin, LM)ino, Venice ; and the number of pupils has increased from about 3000 in 1862 to 5000 in 1879. Besides these fifteen official establishments, of which that of Milan with a maximum of 1491 pupils is by far the largest, there are academies at Genoa, Bergamo, Verona, Siena, Pisa, and Peru gia. A Musco Tibcrino has been established by the commission charged to superintend the exploration of the Tiber. Five musical conservatories are supported by Government at Florence, Milan, i Naples, Palermo, and Parma. Next to the difficulty of arousing the interest of the mass of the people, in matters of education, so as to secure the realization of I the legal enactments, the greatest difficulty perhaps with which the administration has had to contend has been that of obtaining a i sufficient supply of teachers competent for their task. In the nor mal and &quot;magistral&quot; schools training is provided at the national expense for candidates, whether male or female, for the teaching pro fession. The age for entrance is fixed at sixteen for male and fifteen for female students, and the course of study lasts for three years. In 1877-78 there were 35 normal and &quot; magistral &quot; schools for male and 67 for female teachers. The number of pupils wtis 7854 (1447 males and 6407 females). For further information on this section see Hippeau, L Instruction publique en Italic, Paris, 1875, and Pecaut, Deny mois clc mission en Italic, Paris, 1880. The great Italian public libraries are those of Turin, Milan, Naples, Florence. Florence receives a copyright copy of all new books and new editions. The Pavia library is especially rich in works in natural science, the legacy left by Professor Frank enab ling it to purchase from 1500 to 1600 new works per annum. The total number of new books added to all the state libraries, which now number 33, was in 1872 about 14,000. The readers numbered 853,901, besides 9008 teachers who got books home with them. More recent statistics show comparatively little change. Among the philanthropic educational institutions those for the tuition of deaf-mutes deserve particular mention. It was in Italy that some of the earlier attempts were made to give instruction to this class of unfortunates ; and two of its most important establish ments, the royal institute of deaf-mutes at Genoa and the corre sponding institute at Milan, date respectively from 1801 and 1805. From a report (Rome, 1880) which was compiled for the instruction of the second international congress of deaf-mute teachers (Milan, 1881) it appears that there are thirty-five establishments of this class, with 1491 pupils in 1880, the largest being at Milan, Bologna, Naples, Turin, and Genoa, The total number of deaf-mutes in the kingdom is estimated at nearly 12,000 ; and hence it is calculated that the number of pupils would require to be about 7000. The. oral method is very generally employed in the Italian institutions, the rich vowel-system of the Italian language giving a favourable basis of operations. From the Strenna- Album of the Association.? dclla Stampa (Rome, 1881) we learn that the number of periodicals published in Italy in 1880 was 1454, or about one to every 8000 of the reading popula tion, a statement that compares favourably with corresponding statistics of other countries. One paper, Gazzetta Nazionalc Gcnovcse, dates its origin as far back as 1797 ; all the others belong_to the present century, 162 having appeared for the first time in 1876, 227 in 1877, 240 in 1878, and 246 in 1879. The total number pub lished in 1836 was only 185, in 1857 it amounted to 311, in 1864 to 450, in 1871 to 765, and in 1875 to 914. According to the statistics of 1875, more than the half of the, total number of 494 were published at Milan (104), Florence (82), Turin (68), Rome, Naples, Bologna, Palermo, and Venice. See Archivio di Statistica, 1876, fasc. 1.