A Memoir of How Italian Secondary Schools Changed in the Second Half of the 20th Century: Birth and Development of a Concept of Innovation and Experimentation in the Private Papers of the Principal Tranquillo Bertamini

The purpose of present contribution is to investigate, through individual school memory, the birth and development of an idea for innovation and experimentation in the second half of the 20th century. Tranquillo Bertamini is the figure around which the period of renewal is reconstructed, from the end of the Second World War to the implementation of the experimentation at the “G.B. Brocchi” high school in Bassano del Grappa (North-Eastern Italy), where he was principal. The main sources for our research were his private records preserved at the Museum of Education in Padua, including personal correspondence, and drafts for speeches, printed contributions, reform projects, and reflections on important aspects of education theory. Private and no private papers for represent the school memory of a complex period of transformation, through the real experience of one of its protagonists.