La scuola secondaria superiore in Italia dal 1945 ad oggi Authors Giovanni Genovesi Abstract Higher secondary school in Italy from 1945 up to now. Social, political and educational aspects. Professor Genovesi analyzes the evolution of the Italian secondary school system, indicating which have been and are the obstacles and the social and political hindrances having affected it, from the old Casati Law of 1859 on. The historical exploration of the changes in the Italian secondary education throught the fascist and republican period up to the present days brings the author to the conclusion that higher (secondary) education has to ensure a general formation or training allowing young people's professional insertion to society in a profitable way. Higher secondary school-and school in general- has not to offer an specific,narrow, professionalization, because it is by itself an space for improving the human intelligence and the availability to produce culture. Higher (secondary) education reform has to be based, according Genovesi, on the ideas of unification and optionality,and from this outlook the professionalization becomes the chief aim of human formation, a professionalization conceived as the availability to exerce or practise in a rational and competent way a profession with all the ethic and cognoscitive potentialities of the professional practice. Downloads Text complet (Català) Published 2005-10-21 Issue No. 3: 1997-1998 Section Secondary Education since 1945 License The intellectual property of articles belongs to the respective authors. On submitting articles for publication to the journal Educació i Història: Revista d'Història de l'Educació, authors accept the following terms:Authors assign to Society for the History of Education in Catalan-speaking countries (a subsidiary of Institut d’Estudis Catalans) the rights of reproduction, communication to the public and distribution of the articles submitted for publication to Educació i Història: Revista d'Història de l'Educació.Authors answer to Society for the History of Education in Catalan-speaking countries for the authorship and originality of submitted articles.Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for the reproduction of all graphic material included in articles.The Society for the History of Education in Catalan-speaking countries declines all liability for the possible infringement of intellectual property rights by authors.The contents published in the journal, unless otherwise stated in the text or in the graphic material, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) 3.0 Spain licence, the complete text of which may be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.en. Consequently, the general public is authorised to reproduce, distribute and communicate the work, provided that its authorship and the body publishing it are acknowledged, and that no commercial use and no derivative works are made of it.The journal is not responsible for the ideas and opinions expressed by the authors of the published articles.