Dalla memoria alla storia. I monumenti agli studenti caduti nella Grande Guerra come documenti da valorizzare attraverso la didattica della storia

Abstract

School is the main place in which a large and non-specialist audience gets in touch with history (as a science) through the activity of specialists in the discipline and textbooks elaborated by academic scholars. At the same time, school is a State institution and it represents the main channel through which the State itself impose its vision of the past (as memory). The article proposes some thoughts on the exploitation of monuments to fallen students in WWI as documents to be analyzed during didactic activities in order to share historical method and de-mystify national and State narratives that still inspire the liturgy of the Italian Republic, revealing the power relations that underlie them. Moving from memory to history would then enable students to become more aware citizens.