Carloforte is a city located on the island of San Pietro, in the extreme south-western part of Sardinia, in Italy. The island of San Pietro remained uninhabited until 1738, when a group of Genoese settlers who lived in the city of Tabarka in Libya inhabited it with the approval of the Savoys. Since then begins the story of a new city that is characterized by a culture and a language that is profoundly different from that of the main island. Between Carloforte and the territory of Sulcis there is therefore a deeper border than the sea that separates them.
Carloforte, although it rises on a small island of only 51 km2, exceeded 8,000 inhabitants in the first decade of the twentieth century. It is an economically rich and productive centre, particularly in the fishing and processing of tuna, of coral and maritime transport. In this it differs from the rest of Sardinia, still mostly dedicated to sheep farming and poorly industrialised.
Studies on teacher mobility in Sardinia show that there is a tendency for teachers to work in their countries of origin, particularly at the beginning of the twentieth century. This trait is found marked early in Carloforte, a sign of a clear desire to pass on a cultural imprinting.

The resarch is based on unpublished documents held in many Archives in Sardinia, since the Carloforte's Historical Archive burned in 1955. I used the teachers' files held by Cagliari State Archive, the School Inspector's archive held by the Iglesias' Historical Archive and documents about the Province of Cagliari held by Oristano's City Archive. These documents allow us to reconstruct the school's life both from a narrative and a quantitative point of view.

Even if the history of Carloforte is well known and studied by local historians, no one had ever dealt with the history of its school. Education, especially in a place so characterized by an identity point of view, is a way to hand down and renew a local identity while welcoming the influences of the host territory. Understanding what citizens expected from education in such a particular place is interesting in comparative terms with the main island to understand how different social needs can give rise to different educational needs.

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