If her schedule allows, she said, her prime minister will go to Washington for the inauguration of the new US president tomorrow. Meloni has managed to find herself among Trump’s privileged interlocutors and has been reduced to a leading figure in the EU, due to the stagnation of the Franco-German axis.
However, despite its intense action in foreign policy, it does not neglect the internal reality of Italy. And in this context, Meloni is promoting, through the Minister of Education, Giuseppe Valditara, educational reform. The improvement of the level of education in Italy is considered essential: according to the data of Censis, (the Italian Center for the Study of Social and Economic Sciences, which, since 1964, has recorded the trends of Italian society), 35% of Italians, aged 16-65 years old, unable to understand a text of medium difficulty.
A disheartening finding, to say the least, which is no consolation for the state of Greek education: according to the recent annual report of the Authority for Quality Assurance in Primary and Secondary Education (ADIPPDE), 20% of students who complete compulsory education (C ‘ Gymnasium) are functionally illiterate, meaning that they do not understand the spoken and written language and also have significant difficulties in mathematics.
In summary, the Italian educational reform will include: the reinstatement of the optional teaching of Latin (which has been abolished since 1978) in the High School, the memorization of poems in the Primary School, the separation of the History course from the Geography course, which they were taught in combination until now. There will also be greater emphasis on the teaching of the history of Italy, Europe and America, the history of the West and Western civilization. In literature, more poetry will be taught, from the Homeric epics, Virgil’s Aeneid to classical Italian poets and Japanese haiku.
Bible passages will also be taught, as well as novels by foreign authors such as Tolkien (for whom Prime Minister Meloni has a great weakness, as well as northern European writers of fantasy). Teaching more music will be added to the curriculum. Who would have thought that in the homeland of Verdi and Rossini, musical education would be insufficient!
As expected, there were reactions to the government announcements. “The Minister of Education promotes the teaching of the Bible and abolishes the combined teaching of History and Geography”, the student organization Uds emphasized in its announcement. Correct reaction, because the combined teaching of History and Geography only opens the students’ horizons and cultivates their critical thinking.
It should be noted that in France, the two subjects have always been taught in combination (Histoire-Geo), while unfortunately, in Greece, Geography is only taught from the 5th grade to the 2nd high school. (With paradoxical results, such as high school students not being able to place Athens and Sparta on the map, when teaching the Peloponnesian war).
On the other hand, not all the measures of the Italian educational reform are to be rejected: teaching primary school children to recite poems from the chest can only be positive, both to better handle their language and to boost their self-confidence . As for the increase in music teaching hours in a country with a huge musical tradition like Italy, the criticism simply does not hold up.
If opposition political parties such as the social democratic Democratic party, under Ellie Schlein, want to seriously criticize the Meloni government, then they will have to put forward serious arguments, such as the lack of public feedback infrastructure, low teacher salaries. And not to politicize with easy buzzwords like “the government’s nostalgia for the era of punishing students with a ruler”.
