Social Capital and Boarding Schools in Italy

Abstract

The field of education is the area to which the concept of SC is traditionally applied. This study develops a very specific topic: the role played by residential secondary schools, especially in the form of public institutions. These are very specific institutions and quite rare in Italy. The conception of SC adopted in this study separates the social contexts in which it is generated distinguishing three types of SC: 1) Family SC; 2) Wider community SC; 3) Generalized SC. This paper looks at the measure in which the three types of SC affect the development of human capital (HC), of civic culture, and of the planning skills (generative skills) of the students in public residential high schools. In this work I present the data relative to the incidence of SC on micro- and meso-type relationships. This quantitative survey collected data on an experimental sample of students from all the Italian public boarding schools, and on a control group of students from an ordinary Italian state high school.