It's never too late

«As a boy my dream was to be a long-time captain, I attended the Nautical Institute, but at the same time I wanted to be a teacher, so I was studying at the Teaching Institute…». Alberto Manzi, a Roman, graduated as such in 1942. Called to arms after 8 September by the Italian Social Republic, as a staunch anti-fascist he refused and saved himself from roundups by finding refuge with the Order of Malta. With the arrival of the Americans in Rome, he enlisted as a volunteer in the San Marco battalion, an ally of the English. "Especially after the experience of the war, the fixed idea I had was to help the children." At the end of the conflict, he takes up service at the "Aristide Gabelli" Institute of Reeducation and Punishment in Rome, accepting the position previously rejected by four colleagues, and where he will create, together with the "students", about 90 boys between 9 and 17 years old, the first newspaper of the Institutes of Penalty, La Tradotta. "Of all those boys, when they got out of prison, only 2 out of 94, so I was told, went back to prison." Later he was employed at the Fratelli Bandiera elementary school in Rome, where he remained until retirement.

When the "evaluation forms" were introduced in 1981, that the school reform had replaced the report card, Manzi refused to draw them up because «I cannot label a boy with a judgment, because the boy it changes, it is in motion ». Disobedience costs him suspension from teaching and pay. In 1960 he was chosen to present the TV program It's Never Too Late , using innovative teaching methodologies in front of classes of illiterate or nearly illiterate adults. Thus it was that one and a half million people obtained their elementary school certificate thanks to his distance lessons. Therefore in the collective memory Alberto Manzi will remain for everyone "the master of the Italians".


Annamaria Gobbato
NP December 2021