During the fifties the pioneers of industrial archaeology very probably did not think that the subject of their studies would have been used for educational purposes.
It is only recently that industrial archaeology has been ‘discovered’ by schools and become an educational resource in all respects. This has been due to its diffusion, the emergence of its more clearly defined interdisciplinary nature, the introduction of workplaces and their relative infrastructure within cultural heritage, and the spread of new teaching methods which give more attention to ‘physicality’, the lower classes, neighbourhoods and social problems.

Today, this new science is considered as one of the ways of teaching the new generation to adequately evaluate whatever is visible and physical and to reassess the object in relation to the context within which it interacts in terms of economy, society and culture.

Often knocking down a factory means destroying an educational instrument, a very real record by means of which students can obtain an immense amount of information concerning the reason for its particular location, the energy used, the style and materials of construction, the machines, the technological evolution, the production phases and the relationship between the entrepreneur and the employees, working hours and any social conflicts, the quality of life, the changing market requirements etc.
Furthermore the factory is studied, visited and photographed as an integral part of the landscape which it has helped to modify and characterise to such an extent that its demolition would be equivalent to the destruction of the newly consolidated and accepted balance.

The industrial archaeological patrimony has an impressive capacity to involve other disciplines which usually proceed along parallel lines without ever meeting: we are referring to economics, history of art, town planning, anthropology, history, sociology, geography, technology and literature etc.

Thanks to its interdisciplinary quality it can offer many possibilities to make curriculum subjects, which have become arid due to traditional and theoretical teaching programmes, lively and interesting. For example, it is particularly suitable for the study of history ‘of those who have gone before’, understood as knowledge of economic and social structures; history which is not only concerned with chronology, general problems and theoretical projects but also with working instruments, artefacts, producers and production cycles.

The industrial archaeological patrimony allows the student real contact with the sources, in other cases difficult or even impossible when limited to the written document alone.

In schools, the introduction of evidence from the palaeo-industrial age and the industrial revolution also signifies an approach concerning the history of techniques, surpassing boundaries which still exist between those who teach mechanics, technology and architectonic structures, and those who do history and Italian.

In the first place, it will be the students who take advantage of educational activities based on the evidence of the civilisation of the machine, by actively participating in research carried out in a creative and stimulating environment which is geared to the recovery of local culture using ‘traditional’ instruments, though often only known indirectly, such as map making, photographic survey, oral sources, records, iconography, magazines, and other ‘unexpected’ sources like poetic compositions, novels, theatrical productions, educational treatise, machines, buildings and infrastructures.

Apart from students from lower and upper secondary schools, pupils from primary school upper classes can also be guided in the study of industrial settlements and material culture in general. It goes without saying that the educational activity should have different objectives depending on students’ interests and their necessary minimum requisites.

However it is fundamental that there must be a real willingness on the part of the teachers to try out this dynamic way of teaching and to become familiar with the themes connected with industrial archaeology.

by Francesco Tavone