212 EDUCATION IN FASCIST ITALY
spiritually for their household duties and for teaching in nursery
schools/
If this meant that the girls were to disappear from the
Lyceum and Technical Institute, and, consequently, from practi-
cally all the university Faculties, the aspect of the modern Italian
schools, and possibly of the whole of education, would have
changed considerably; but the vagueness of the conditions under
which this was to happen, i.e., the future definition of work for
women in the corporative system, made it doubtful that any-
thing of the kind would have taken place at least for a very long
time. The special courses for workers, about which a hint was
given in the Charter of Labour, were to be set up, mainly, by the
syndicates; they were to represent the main link between culture
and production. The twenty-second article is, however, again
too vague to make one sure that there is something really con-
structive in it.
The ways of assessing the proficiency of the pupils at the end of
every scholastic year, and, especially, at the end of their secon-
dary studies, were to be changed, according to the twenty-fourth
article of the School Charter; and so were some of the rules for
admission to the universities, according to the twenty-fifth article.
The introduction of the State examination as the final test of the
achievements of secondary students had been one of the most
important innovations brought about by Gentile. It may be
remembered that the idea was to put private and public students
in the same position, so that impartial examiners, unknown to
the candidates, and representing only the interests of culture and
the State, should decide who was worthy of entering the universi-
ties or the professions. Several difficulties had presented them-
selves in this system, the most important of which was the
difficulty of finding as many reliable university teachers, willing
to preside over the many, hundreds of boards of examiners, as
were necessary. Still, it seemed to be an improvement on the
former system. The School Charter struck another blow at
Gentile's reform by reducing the State examination (the name
remained) to little more than the old internal examination. The
board of examiners was to be formed by members of whom only
two were outsiders, the others being the teachers of the public
schools in which the examinations were held. The result was
that the students of the State schools were again in a privileged
position in comparison with the * private * candidates. A partial
renaedy to this inequality was suggested in the School Charter
by allowing State examinations to be held in those private
schools which were members of the E.N J.M.S. and recognized
a& of Bormal standard.