Antonio Gramsci, education and the Prison Notebooks
Sebastián Gómez
The article proposes a theoretical reflection on the concept of passive revolution in the Prison Notebooks to deal with Gramsci’s pedagogical controversies against the Prime Minister of Education of the Mussolini regime, Giovanni Gentile, and his well-known educational reform of 1923. Gramsci assumes the passive revolution in terms of a heuristic formula, that is, as a general perspective that organizes prison research around the crisis of hegemony and, more specifically, the advent of fascism and the theoretical role of Benedetto Croce. Gramsci’s educational polemic against Gentile is interpreted from this perspective. In this way, the article suggests in the Prison Notebooks an isomorphism between the analysis of the Neapolitan philosopher as theorist of the passive revolution and the philosopher of Castelvetrano as its pedagogue. Often overlooked among Gramscian pedagogical studies (classical and contemporary), the passive revolution allows us to take in its entirety the pedagogical debate against Giovanni Gentile in the Prison Notebooks as well as the proposal for a unitary school.
Keywords
Prison Notebooks, Passive revolution, Giovanni Gentile, Pedagogy, Fascism.
