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Michele Coppino
was born in Alba (Cuneo) on 1st April 1822. Coppino ended his first studies at the seminary of Alba, obtaining a free position in the Board of Provinces in Turin, which allowed him to get the degree in Literature when he was 22.
He started soon (1844-1845) the teaching of Retorics in Demonte (Cuneo) and continued it from 1845 to 1847 at Pallanza and in 1848 in Novara. In 1850 Coppino was appointed as board doctor at the faculty of literature of Turin, College of Porta Nuova.
Since 1853 the professor cooperated to the "Rivista contemporanea" (Contemporary Magazine).
In 1857 Coppino was appointed as candidate by the liberal democratic electoral Body for Alba, but in the ballot he lost against the count Carlo Alfieri of Magliano.
He approached the Masonry to which he was initiated on 17th February 1860. On 25th March of the same year the professor was appointed at the Board of Alba with a quite plebiscitary voting but the election was cancelled as Coppino was an ordinary member of the Superior Board of Public Education. He presented again in the same Board on 16th September of the same year, winning elections, but events which followed Garivaldi's expedition in the Southern Italy brought to the dissolution of the Chamber and to new election in January 1861. Coppino wins elections again, but they are cancelled again, because he was a member of the Public Education and professor of Retorics. Coppino wrote a letter to Francesco De Sanctis, Minister of Public Education, in which he gave up his salary, his official office and, if this was not enough, the very work in order to be able to make political activities. At supplementary elections of April he won and in the end he could bring to an end his term of office.
On 22nd March 1867 Coppino became deputy president of the Chamber of Deputies (after being re-elected for the 10th legislating office). On 10th April Rattazzi appointed him as Minister of the Public Education and had to dismiss from deputy president of the Academy, whereas even his election as a deputy was cancelled. He was re-elected on 5th May and in December the chair in Italian Eloquence at the University of Turin was returned to him.
In 1868 his election as a deputy was cancelled again. Re-elected in 1874, two years after as deputy president of the Chamber, on 25th March of the same year Depretis called him to the al Ministry of the Public Education. He was a minister for two years (25th March 1876-26 December 1877 and 26th December 1877-24th March 1878). In this way, Coppino decided to end the project on the reformation of the elementary school, whose basic principles were: the obligation of the inferior elementary teaching, its free teaching, its a-confessionality. The bill on the obligation of the elementary teaching was approved by the Chamber on 10th March and by the Senate on 4th June. This was a fundamental moment for transforming Italian school institutes and represented a clear mark of the renewal will in Depretis left.
During the third Depretis' government (19th December 1878-14th July 1879) he was still a minister of Education and looked after improving masters' conditions, assuring them better economic conditions and a higher stability in their job positions.
On 25th August 1901 Coppino died at Villa Rivoli, next to his natal town.
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