Figure 1.-This class photograp was taken at Cologno Monzese during the 1930s. This was a comune (municipality) on the outskirts of Milan, about 5 kilometres (3 mi) northeast of Milan. Milan was a big industrial city. Notice that the boys were mostly wearing long stockings with various forms of footwear. One boy wears knee socks. Cologno Monzese was a fairly small municipality in a still somewhat rural outskirts of Milan until after World War II.

The world wide Depression dominated the economies of countries around the world. The protectionist policies of the United States and other countries impacted Italy. Even more imprtant in any economics discussion is Italy's enormous north/south divide. This of course impacted schoolwear , affecting how parents could afford to dress their children. And footwear was the single most important expensive garment parents were faced with. The situation did not change in southern Italy because many children did not have a shoes, even in good times. The situation was different in northern Italy. Most children in rural areas commonly went barefoot, but school was different. Most children wore shoes to school. As far as we can tell, this was because parents saw school as imprtant and they thoughht it important to dress them well for school. Another factor may be that it was in part a matter of pride. Parents did not want to be seen as poor or unsucessful, which would result from sending their kids to school barefoot. We are unsure as to just how important each of these factors were. We do not think that the schools were insisting. It seems crueto think schools would turn away really poor children, but we do not know this for a fact. An Italian reader has provided some information about Lombardy. This was where the big industrial city of Milan was located. But we see this trend of waring shoes to school impacting the rural areas as well. An Italian reader writes, "This is also what my father told me. He attended the first years of primary school in the mid-1930s at Rho, in the countryside outside Milan. He wore wooden shoes in bad weather, otherwise he went barefoot. For school, however, he had to wear his wooden shoes. When the weather was good, he would put them on just before entering the school building and then took them off after leaving school." This suggests that it was the school enforcing the rule. Our Italian reader reports, "There was no national school dress code in Italy. I cannot rule out the possibility that some rules were issued by provincial authorities. In any case, in some places (especially in the north) there was a widespread idea that it was forbidden to go to school barefoot, even though there may not have been a specific rule."

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Created: 1:14 PM 3/11/2024
Last updated: 2:08 PM 3/11/2024