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Local development is becoming increasingly dependent on the tourism industry, especially in fragile contexts such as islands, where tourism makes it possible to overcome, at least in part, the obstacles linked to geo-morphological characteristics. The relevance of the sector for the economy is documented by the international literature and underscored in various studies (Balaguer & Cantavella-Jorda, 2002; Croes & Vanegas Sr, 2008; Dritsakis, 2004; Durbarry, 2004; Eugenio-Martin, Martin-Morales, & Sinclair, 2008; Eugenio-Martin, Morales, Scarpa, 2004; Hazari & Sgro, 1995; Maloney & Montes Rojas, 2005; Pigliaru & Lanza, 2000; Sequeira & Maçãs Nunes, 2008), which explain why tourism is attributed a leading role and even recognized as a driving force for the local economy. It is capable of creating new economic opportunities, especially, as mentioned, for island contexts, and even more so for those of modest size, which require special attention given the specific characteristics that distinguish them from the mainland. Islands are, indeed, a unique cluster despite belonging to individual states, and, being located in different regions of the world and featuring different stages of economic development and tourism, they are the beneficiaries of development policies focused on the economy of services and culture. This is essentially due to reasons linked to specific territorial features in terms of morphology and geographical location, primarily associated with the condition of isolation from the mainland. The result is a particular condition that characterizes them both materially, with effects on transport and logistics, and therefore on their economic and production autonomy, and ideally, i.e. in relation to the place that islands have in the collective imagination. They are associated with the desire to escape, to get in touch with nature, to slow down the pace and break patterns, and to attract a large number of visitors who, however, are concentrated mainly during the summer months. This leads to many difficulties and has several implications, in terms of pressure and quality, and requires careful management from very early on, from the stage of discovery of the destination by the first tourists, in order to guide development by limiting the drawbacks.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution and use of the school desk in unified Italy as a multifunctional and highly efficient tool, which was required not only to efficiently support in-class activities, to facilitate the classroom management and finally to maintain a correct body posture in order to preserve pupils’ health, but also to accomplish the additional task of working as real “gymnastic equipment”, i.e. suitable for performing various gymnastic exercises inside the classroom.

The assumption upon which this paper rests is that school desks have always been signifiers charged with multiple meanings related to the evolution of curriculum, pedagogic ideas and daily school practices, which have often been forgotten, abandoned or, for some reasons, underrepresented in the official history of education as well as in the collective memory of school. In order to rebuild this forgotten history, and retrace the possible theoretical-pedagogical basis underlying such practice, the authors have systematically reviewed the Italian manuals on gymnastics between desks from the 1870s to the 1970s, retraced sources documenting this practice in the daily school life (government rules, school programmes, school hygiene prescriptions, iconographic sources, teachers and school managers’ testimonies) and finally, compared with other foreign practices (such as “calisthenics”).

The convergence between many differentiated sources has demonstrated the longevity of this school practice, which was not only the fruit of educational theories of gymnastic teachers but was also determined by the backwardness and logistic inadequacies of many Italian schools. The paper reveals how this gymnastic practice, after establishing itself in the post-Unification Italian schools, continued almost uninterrupted until the Second World War and even until the 1970s, evidencing how gymnastic teachers, hygienists, educationalists and lawmakers continued, over almost a century, to scientifically legitimise (from the top downwards) an educational practice that was actually driven from the bottom upwards, i.e. determined by an endemic lack of adequate spaces and tools for physical education in Italian schools.

For the very first time, the special source of Italian manuals and booklets on gymnastics between desks has been located, analysed and systematically reviewed for the period 1870s-1970s, and then cross-checked against differentiated sources. This study actually represents the first step of a research which must be still further developed. Undoubtedly, the “new” source represented by the manuals of “gymnastics between school desks” offered a first original perspective from which to explore the use of this furniture in the school of the past, thereby enabling historians of education to shed the first light on a school practice that has been overlooked or forgotten, and still hidden within the “black box of schooling”.