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Italian school smocks chronology 2000s grembiule della scuola 1950s
Italian School Smock Chronology: The 1950s
Figure 1.--We see two boys the Cosenza Province, Calabria Region, southern Italy wearing the traditional smocks with bows in bare feet during May 1957. The Italian Economic Miracle at the time was changing Italy. We see fewer boys without shoes, but it was still fairly common in Calabria. An Italian reader writes, "You are correct. There were no national guidelines. Probably at the times the provincial school offices gave some guidelines. Anyway, in the State schools no child could be refused for the lack of the smock. Nowaday each school adopts its own dress code."
We continue to see Italian boys wearing school smocks in the 1950s. We are not sure about the requirements. We see some schools where all the boys are wearing smocks and sone school in which none of the boys are wearing smocks. Clearly there was no national requirement. As far as we can tell, it was all up to the individual schools. Perhaps some provincial aithorities were involved, but we are not sure about that. We also see schools where some boys are wearing smocks. The proportion varies from school to school. Here we assume that some parents decided to puchase smocks on their own without any direction from school autorities. We suspect that mny parents could not fford the added expense. Which is interesting because the idea of a smock was to cover over class differences shown by the clothing that the children wore. We do not see boys wearing smocks at the Fossato Jonico village school in 1950. Virtually all the boys at the Scuola Italiana in Tangiers, Morocco during the early 1950s. Teenage boys at the Liceo Foscarini were not wearing smocks about 1950. We see two boys the Cosenza Province, Calabria Region, southern Italy wearing the traditional smocks with bows in bare feet during May 1957 (figure 1). The Italian Economic Miracle at the time was changing Italy. We see fewer boys without shoes, but it was still fairly common in Calabria. We note the Liceo Bianca Villa in 1958. About half the boys wear dark smocks, wide white collars, and bows. Subsequent photographs show few boys wearing smocks at the school.
