The “scholared” images. Fascist propaganda in the covers of notebooks and magazines of the “Ventennio”

Abstract

As known, the fascist propaganda, made use of school and its tools – manuals, reading books, notebooks and magazines – to spread and sediment its ideology. The carefully curated, as much as politically incorrect, images that dotted the products of scholastic and extra-scholastic publishing fed the imaginations of boys and girls and were meant to evoke and stimulate a desire for emulation. The covers, in particular, were created by the best artists of the time or were the work of renowned photographers who portrayed attitudes, expressions, postures and athletic gestures approved by the regime. Those images served, therefore, as "didactic highlighters", visually emphasizing the precepts of the dictatorship and they had a precise and timely educational intent.