This paper aims to rethink the significance of the cultural transfers, social actors behind and spaces of the internationalization of pedagogical knowledge between Prussia and Italy by looking at the development of a specific discipline: handicraft education or manual training.

The research covers the three last decades of the nineteenth century up to the First World War (1870 – 1914).

The last decades of the nineteenth century saw an increasing demand for industrial workers in both Italy and Germany and, even though in both countries the industrialization process was a regional phenomenon, it had a profound effect on the national pedagogical debate and hence on the implementation of a national school system after the respective unifications. 

It may be added that, only in time of intense industrialization and nation building, like the second half of 19^th century was, manual training achieved a new relevance and reached a larger political and cultural audience.

For one of the most ardent propagandists of Froebel's theory in Italy, Italian teacher Adolph Pick, the Kindergarten represented the best solution for the industrial society to come: in this space, children could learn to cooperate and work together, while at the same time preventing the spread of social conflict (Pick 1929). But Froebel was not the only reference for the Italian reformers; between the end of the 1870s and the beginning of the 1880s, the Manual Training Movement (Handfertigkeitsbewegung) expanded in Germany and attracted much attention. 

In Italy the new interest in the development of a work-oriented education system was linked not only to the modernization process under-way in the country, but also to the new electoral bill. In 1882 the voting right was extended to all those citizens who could read and, even though in number terms it represented a weak democratization of the Italian electoral body, it had great political significance. Primary school took on a new importance and shaping good citizens through school became a central issue on the political agenda of the Liberal elites. 

Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, Italian reformers began to frequently cross the national borders in order to observe and learn innovative pedagogical techniques, such as those of the Kindergarten or those of the School of Manual Training in Leipzig; meanwhile, some of the most ardent Froebelian propagandists travelled in Italy and helped to extend the German pedagogue’s success. In 1885, the Minister of Education approved the inclusion of Froebel’s Kindergarten in teacher-training schools and promoted pedagogical missions abroad in order to collect information about the foreign systems of manual schooling. In 1894, inspired by Froebel's theory, handicraft education was introduced to the primary school curriculum.

A benchmark may be considered the introduction of manual training in primary school curriculum reform in 1894, by the Italian minister of education Guido Baccelli.

The minister provided in 1899 special guidelines for those teachers who wanted to develop handicraft education in their school. For the first time, with the teaching of manual training, strong differences between male and female education were introduced at primary school level. 

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