I remember AN MPs and members of Azione Studentesca stamping the ‘offending’ books at Feltrinelli bookshops, collecting reports via text message, reciting selected passages on Stalin and the gulags, and counting the lines devoted to the Foibe massacres (when any were included). Whilst the world was discovering the wonders of the Internet, we were arguing about the Spanish Civil War and the defeat at Guadalajara. Years went by; with great effort, they managed to add a bit about the foibe, a bit about the gulags, but then another problem arose: the glaring omission of Italian war crimes in the African campaign! And so it all started again from scratch. Then identity politics arrived. The accusations became endless: patriarchal law, racist grammar, Veltroni’s book on the Constitution distributed in primary schools as compulsory reading, gender ideology even in arithmetic, ‘Paolino va al mercato con i suoi due papà…’ (it really exists).

The fact is that contemporary history is, by its very nature, a biased discipline, subject to the proximity of events and the perspective of the writer. The subject is still in the room, protesting, getting worked up. Moreover, the authors of history textbooks were, for the most part, trained within the Marxist paradigm. This is not an accusation: to claim otherwise would be to suggest one has spent the last sixty years on another planet. Of course, there is a difference between a regional accent and a political rally. One can recount the present with Gramsci’s cadence without resorting to handing out leaflets at school. There is, so to speak, a threshold of elegance that our page 666 has overlooked. But if only that were the problem. If only.

Not long ago, Andrea Atzemi, Luigi Marco Bassani and Carlo Lottieri set about reading a selection of school textbooks adopted in Italy from the 1990s onwards ("A scuola di declino", highly recommended). If there is one dominant theme, one underlying current, one ideological thread running through these history textbooks, it is hostility towards the logic of capitalism, always and in all circumstances. The state is equated with progress; only the faults of the market are highlighted; and ‘every step towards economic freedom must be understood as a form of decline’. This is why people take to the streets ‘against capitalism’ and never against the INPS (and besides, capitalism is the perfect enemy; it wins hands down against all the others).

It is widely acknowledged that in schools or universities, one is unlikely to encounter anyone who speaks passionately about the squalor, misery and horror of planned economies, or the importance of economic freedom. This is a regrettable situation, yet how can we address it? The answer, unfortunately, is that we cannot. We must simply accept this reality. After all, the school must necessarily adopt a solidarity-oriented, statist, and socialist-leaning stance, because once we have grown up, we will all become individualists. From a right-wing perspective, however, there is little cause for alarm: the more school is perceived as “left-wing”, the greater the likelihood of embracing right-wing views in adulthood (much like with I Promessi Sposi, whose greatness is perhaps only fully appreciated at the age of forty, when rereading it without the influence of school). In short, the textbook-style contempt for ‘private enterprise’ serves a sacrosanct function of social prevention: have you chosen, as adults, to become self-employed in Italy? Too bad for you – we warned you at school.

At the heart of the matter is a passage in the textbook Trame del tempo 3, published by the well-known Apulian publishing house, which refers to the Meloni government as an executive that “stands out for implementing measures that are clearly repressive”. The passage in question states that the current government “came to power for the first time a century after the March on Rome and seventy-seven years after the Liberation from fascism”; it is “the party that has taken up its legacy and which continues to maintain close ties with its avowedly fascist ‘base’ – as also demonstrated by Fanpage’s June 2024 investigation ‘Gioventù meloniana’”. It goes on to state that the government “stands out for implementing openly freedom-suppressing measures, such as the so-called ‘Security’ bill of September 2024, which significantly curtails the right to protest”. Finally, according to the textbook, the Meloni government is waging “a war on migrants with renewed fervour, with plans for deportation and their constant criminalisation in the media”. 

According to the Minister for Education, Giuseppe Valditara, the textbook should be withdrawn from sale. “It contains statements that are entirely manipulative and unreliable. I believe it is in the publisher’s own best interests, to safeguard the scientific reputation of its publishing house, to withdraw a text which, from a scientific point of view, is entirely inadequate and which risks being used to indoctrinate students.” Laterza, however, has stated its opposition. "I do not think it is appropriate for a history book to venture into political assessments of the government in office. That is not history but current affairs; it is political debate, and there is another forum for that – not a history book that is subsequently adopted by schools," observes Giannelli, whilst acknowledging the legitimacy of Laterza’s decision not to backtrack. “That would be censorship. You cannot tell someone what they must or must not publish. A person is free to write whatever they like; if anyone believes there are defamatory passages, they are free to file a lawsuit or take the matter to the relevant authorities.”

You can write, and you can buy too. “Just don’t buy books that contain certain things,” adds the president. “There is a very clear – and indeed open – procedure laid down by our education system concerning the approval and adoption of a textbook, which is entrusted precisely to the teaching staff. It is up to the teachers’ discretion to adopt one book rather than another.” So was Valditara wrong to call for its removal? "The minister is, after all, a political authority. Whilst on the one hand he administers the education system, on the other he remains a politician with a legitimate vision which, within the current majority, has been legitimised by the majority of those who turned out to vote," replies Giannelli. "I have nothing to say on this matter."

Not even teachers and pupils—who are always very active in taking to the streets to protest against political interference in the classroom—will have spotted it. “It probably went a bit unnoticed. That book will have been assessed correctly in other respects,” concludes the president of the National Association of Headteachers.

Once again today, much of the same is happening. There are the same organisations, from the Students’ Union to Osa and Cambiare Rotta, the same chants, the same faces of ministers smeared with red paint. Once again, Turin is at the epicentre: at the start of the march, photographs of Meloni, Crosetto and Valditara with their faces smeared with red paint were laid on the ground, and at the front of the march were masked protesters, despite the prefecture’s ban.

This year, however, there are three new developments. The first is the timing. No Meloni Day has been brought forward from November to October to ride the wave coming from France – where secondary school pupils have been blocking schools for weeks, forcing the government to close them – and, to some extent, from Spain. “Let’s do as they do in France” is the most frequently repeated slogan, and in Florence a banner reading “L’Ecole est à nous” was paraded. It is a protest conceived as a European movement, which also borrows its forms from our neighbours: the occupations taking place in Turin over the last few days have lasted just an afternoon, but the model is that of the French blockades.

The second is the target. Among the photos defaced in Turin was one of Elly Schlein. In Rome, the march chanted slogans against the PD and the CGIL. It is no longer, or not merely, a protest by the left against the ruling right: it is a protest against the entire political establishment, including the opposition. Yet another problem for a broad coalition which, on the eve of the primaries, thought it could count on support from those streets.

The third issue is the banner. Alongside long-standing grievances – from dilapidated buildings to precarious teaching staff and the high cost of living – this year there is the Valditara decree, which sets a cap of 30 per cent on the number of foreign pupils per class. It has become the symbol of the protest movement: ‘No one is a foreigner’ was the slogan of the march in Milan, and the organisers accuse the government of trying to make people believe that ‘the problem with our schools is foreign pupils’.

Then there is the link to international politics: the most common slogan on the streets is ‘money for schools, not for war’, with countless variations, right up to ‘we want more classrooms, not more bombs’ shouted outside the Ministry. In Turin, alongside photos of ministers, the word ‘Leonardo’ – the defence company – was displayed. It is a pity that the budget measures the government has just sent to Brussels do the exact opposite of what the demonstrators are protesting against: to keep the deficit under control, it has halved the additional defence spending planned for 2028, and the European flexibility intended for rearmament largely ends up being passed on to the public in the form of higher bills. One may debate whether this is the right choice, but it is difficult to call this a ‘government of war’.

One question remains: why is it always Turin? For years, there has been a well-organised activist network in the city, which not even the clearance of the Askatasuna social centre last December has managed to disperse. And there are student collectives acting as a link between secondary schools and that world: also in December, six pupils aged between 16 and 17, almost all from Einstein High School, were placed under house arrest. The significant change this year is that the violence broke out inside schools before it reached the streets. Yesterday, around forty young people wearing balaclavas and carnival masks stormed three schools – damaging a primary school in the process – and pelted the Carabinieri with stones. Today, when the march reached the prefecture, several hundred demonstrators broke away from the rest of the group, covered their faces and started again. For the majority of the students on the streets today, the grievances are genuine: schools are falling apart, there is a shortage of teachers, and transport is expensive. But the ‘No Meloni Day’ ritual has a momentum of its own. Every year, the same organisations bring different young people onto the streets, and every year in Turin an organised minority steals the limelight. 

Let’s be clear: the blame does not lie entirely with the students, who, after all, are simply following the lead of those who, for some time now, have turned the lectern into a platform for making appeals. It is the last resort of professors who are weary and disillusioned with their profession. They are struck by the unpleasant realisation that what they know is of no use whatsoever. To feel useful again, they swap academic study for militant activism and lectures for debate. They invite a barrage of guests to show that every argument has its polemical counterpart. They pander to the students’ natural amateurism: ‘I agree with Leopardi’, ‘I disagree with Sartre’, ‘I like it’, ‘I don’t like it’. They confuse understanding with approval or condemnation. They use books solely to decide whether the author is one of ‘us’ or an enemy. Aided by the terrifying ‘new teaching methodologies’, the result is that the old-fashioned lecture risks disappearing. Yet it is, in fact, the only way to truly grasp an issue, hold it firmly and articulate it with the utmost clarity. The same applies to the professor as Carmelo Bene said of the actor: the mediocre one turns even a monologue into a dialogue, whilst the skilled one turns even a dialogue into a monologue. Not out of autism, but to give time, breathing space and necessity to what they are saying. The rest is just chatter.

The expression “discovering warm water” is often used to describe an obvious insight, yet even such knowledge can occasionally cause discomfort. A lecturer at Unisalento is well aware of this. Instead of rebuking the budding young censors, he described them as an ‘expression of the vitality of our university community’. In Italy, professors are often anxious about appearing sufficiently democratic and accommodating. Suspecting they have brought it on themselves, they do not dare explain to the students that the university is not a film club, and that a proper lecture requires the audience to remain silent long enough for the message to sink in. Debate is reassuring, because it fills the silences and encourages people to take sides. A lecture is jarring, because it robs opinion of the pleasure of believing itself to be fully formed thought.

If the school register were to mobilise pupils and teachers to support remigration, the abolition of civil partnerships, or the reintroduction of compulsory military service, the paradox would be glaringly obvious. Because politics, by definition, divides. It means choosing one thing over another. To claim that any political initiative can be stripped of its conflictual nature and imposed as if it were a moral duty is a colossal and dangerous naivety. This is precisely what is happening in schools and universities. Whether a motion is passed by tacit consent or an institutional document calls for a demonstration, it is being taken for granted that this is not a stance but a fundamental truth. A partisan argument is transformed into a universal premise. Those who dissent must raise their hands and denounce themselves.

Schools and universities, in these cases, do not gauge public opinion. They manufacture it. They do not say outright: ‘We all think this way here, and anyone who disagrees should speak up’, but that is the message. However, it is filtered through the bureaucratic and administrative machine, the perfect refuge for those who throw stones and then play it coy. Instead of organising ranks of students marching in formation behind some Middle Eastern banner, schools should teach pupils to slow down, perhaps even stumble, and to question the unshakeable certainties peddled by everyday chatter.

Fifty years ago, progressive intellectuals were compulsively suspicious of anything that claimed to be neutral. In the family, at the football ground, in the pub, between the sheets, in the way people dressed, on Sundays at the seaside, in their children’s school reports – politics had to be flushed out even when it seemed not to be there. Today, those same individuals no longer seek to uncover it where it is concealed, but to mask it where it is glaringly apparent. A demonstration about Gaza can thus appear to be the simple consequence of an indisputable principle. In Novi Ligure, the old adage ‘everything is political’ has been turned on its head. The left has given up on exposing this false neutrality, and takes to the streets with the mask of universality firmly in place.

There are numerous accounts of students being attacked or marginalised within universities, many of which have been reported by the observatory of the CDEC Foundation (Centre for Contemporary Jewish Documentation), which notes that such cases have been rising exponentially over the past four years. “Fortunately, within my university community, I’ve always surrounded myself with the right people and I feel safe. But I have friends and cousins who’ve had to face unpleasant situations even at secondary school. All you have to do is say you’re Jewish and people immediately link it to geopolitics. That’s why many prefer not to expose themselves.” Perhaps the indifference – or at the very least the lack of awareness – on the part of some vice-chancellors regarding the seriousness of the situation has also played a part? “Yes, not least because it is clear that the university must remain a space for free debate and dialogue. Fortunately, there are exemplary cases, such as the university I attend, the Politecnico, which has managed to remain fairly neutral and has guaranteed the right to education. Then, however, there are cases such as that of the Einaudi Campus in Turin (where the UGEI was prevented from displaying a poster for the ‘right to education’), where the abuse of power was plain for all to see,” says Piperno. In his view, in any case, “there is a huge difference between human relationships and those mediated by social media, which are often a vehicle for hatred. In human relationships, it is more common to meet people who are interested in understanding your culture, learning about your traditions, and engaging in interfaith dialogue. It is the arduous attempt to engage with one another rather than clash.’ Speaking of conflict, one of UGEI’s latest campaigns is aimed at raising awareness of the Anti-Semitism Bill, which is currently awaiting final approval in Parliament. “For us, this piece of legislation is very important because it recognises a specific phenomenon that is gaining ground in our country. To say that Israelis are the new Nazis is to fall back, yet again, into the demonisation of another culture, into the desperate search for a scapegoat. Furthermore, the IHRA definition is important because it has been adopted for years at European level and was endorsed by Italy in 2020. There is no curtailment of freedom of assembly and demonstration. In our own small way, we have launched an appeal seeking to bring together as many associations as possible from different political backgrounds, in order to be as inclusive as possible.”

Social media, however, is not necessarily a bad thing. “And we at UGEI have used it for awareness-raising campaigns such as ‘We are the memory’ on the Holocaust. Or the ‘Ask a Jew’ campaign to raise awareness of our culture: that of Italians who simply practise a different religion.” The regret is always having to put up with calls for boycotts, such as the one regarding the exclusion of Jewish LGBTQ+ organisations from Pride events. “But also the exclusion of the Jewish Brigade from the 25 April parades. It shows a lack of understanding of the history of the Liberation,” says Piperno. So, the hope is that in future, a date such as 7 October will no longer be seen as divisive? “If only,” concludes the UGEI president with a touch of bitterness. “That is what we hope for. Although this year in Bologna, there were those who spoke not of a pogrom committed against the Jews but of an act of Palestinian resistance. We still have a long way to go.”

The first protests erupted shortly after the start of the school year. First of all in Brittany, at the Théodore-Monod secondary school in Le Rheu, near Rennes, where pupils complained of “problems of a human and material nature”. But it was in Créteil, on the south-eastern outskirts of Paris, that the movement intensified. In the wake of a teachers’ strike over a lack of resources and staff, on 17 September, pupils at the Saint-Exupéry secondary school decided to block access to the school, claiming they had been neglected by the Ministry of Education. “The teachers explained the reasons for their discontent to us and we decided to join them,” Cheick Sanogo, a first-year sixth-form student, told France Info. From Créteil, the epicentre of the uprising, the movement spread throughout Île-de-France, the Paris region, and gradually across the whole country, involving a total of over 400 schools.

Social media has accelerated the spread of the protests. “The mobilisation has taken on unexpected proportions,” a student from Saint-Exupéry told France Info, thanks to the many videos circulating “on TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, which are racking up huge numbers of views”. In recent days, the situation has deteriorated, with fires, attacks on school staff and clashes with the police across the country. In Nantes, a fire devastated the entrance and façade of the Nelson Mandela secondary school, and in Lille, numerous rubbish bins and electric bicycles were set alight near the César Baggio secondary school. But the most serious incident occurred at the Victor Hugo High School in Marseille, where “the headteacher, deputy headteacher, head of administration and head of security were attacked and doused with petrol”, according to a statement from the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region.

According to official figures released on Wednesday by the Ministry of the Interior, 625 people were arrested and 83 police officers and gendarmes were injured. Meanwhile, 85 students and 34 members of school staff have been injured since the start of the protests, according to a statement from the Ministry of Education. In Tours, in particular, a young man was seriously injured in the head and rushed to hospital after being struck, presumably by an LBD (‘defensive projectile launcher’) fired by the police.

Faced with the radicalisation of the protests and their spread to universities, Prime Minister Lecornu convened an emergency inter-ministerial crisis meeting. According to the secret services, the student mobilisation is a “manoeuvre organised by France Insoumise (LFI) and its far-left representatives”, Matignon reported in a statement following the meeting. The accusation was contested by the party led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who in turn accused the government of “sinking into conspiracy theories”, describing the students’ movement as a spontaneous one born of exasperation. Yet it is Mélenchon himself who has been capitalising on and inciting the protests from the very beginning, pointing the finger at the police and their methods. “We are proud to be standing outside secondary schools to defend our young people from police brutality,” declared the LFI leader. The LFI-affiliated mayor of Saint-Denis, Bally Bagayoko, also joined the protests, dancing with the young people and stating that “a violent reaction may be legitimate or understandable in the face of the actions of the police”.

The government’s fear is that the protest, which began in secondary schools and has since spread to universities, could extend to other groups that have already voiced their discontent in recent weeks over high fuel prices and the freeze on public sector pay: from motorists to fishermen, from farmers to civil servants. Demands arising from different sectors could thus find common ground in their opposition to the government’s policies, transforming a series of sector-specific protests into a movement of nationwide discontent.

That the government’s not exactly well-conceived Education Decree was primarily propaganda aimed at the right – just as the left’s indignation was merely instrumental propaganda – has already been stated and is clear even to non-Italian speakers. Yet yesterday, La Repubblica carried headlines devoid of factual basis: ‘Parents who do not speak Italian in the firing line’, ‘Children taken away from those who refuse’. This is not true; it is the bipartisan face of populism. Outside the realm of politics, however, there is a cultural absurdity – a denial of our country’s very linguistic memory and of how it was painstakingly built – which is astonishing coming from left-wing politicians and others besides.

The decree does not provide for the removal of children from parents who do not facilitate the use of the Italian language at home – and the Constitutional Court would certainly reject such a provision. But there is not even a ‘right’ in the Constitution to ignore Italian, even setting aside the fact that in Germany, knowledge of the German language is a mandatory requirement for obtaining citizenship. One might argue that this is a task that should be funded by public money, and that is true. But to pass off not knowing Italian as a right is worse than being reactionary; it is simply stupid.

It is astonishing that this should come from the progressive camp: it means they no longer even read Moravia. Or that they are unaware of our country’s linguistic history. That they no longer even read Tullio De Mauro, the great historian of the Italian language, an intellectual of the progressive left, and Minister of Education under Amato. He was the first to explain and clarify the civic – even before the sociological or political – mechanism by which one ‘becomes’ Italian. One emerges from the minority status in which millions of post-war Italians found themselves, and not just in the south. It was also television, yes, after the 1960s (so much for Pasolini’s ‘fireflies’), that ensured all Italians began to speak the language of a united Italy in a way that had not happened for the previous ninety years. They began to speak Italian, at least at a basic level, encouraging their children to use the new language as well. School combined with television, but also a desire for social integration to which all post-war generations can bear witness. De Mauro pointed out that, until 1974, more than half of Italians used only their dialect at home. It was not until the 1980s (was it Berlusconi’s fault?) that Italian became the permanent language in homes as well. In the major cities of the north, it was immigration that led to the dialects dying out first. In Rome, the language had already changed by the sixteenth century, when immigration from Florence and central Italy forced the Romans – who were still speaking like Cola di Rienzo – to change their language altogether. Who knows why they accepted it: could it have been fascism? Do they still read Tullio De Mauro there?

Even The Economist reported on it during the Expo, in an article that recalled with nostalgia and amazement the now-extinct Milanese dialect of Svampa, Jannacci and Strehler – witnesses to a turning point in history that also represented integration. It was not a cataclysm that brought about the change: it was the need for the Milanese (or Turinese) themselves to begin – and gradually succeed – in communicating with the newcomers. But the opposite also happened: dialects and everyday languages began to incorporate words from other sources, or from modernity. It was also a matter of respect and hospitality, of starting to speak the language ‘of everyone’. Consequently, people also ceased speaking dialect at home: Lombard parents, no less than those from the hills around Piacenza, stopped using dialect at the dinner table—precisely to ‘force’ their children to learn Italian, the language of school, the language of everyone. One need only ask an elderly person for confirmation.

Even Concetto Vecchio, however, is stretching the point: “Anyone who emigrated to Switzerland in the 1960s and 1970s knows that only a few parents actually spoke Schweizerdeutsch or German: they would turn up for parent-teacher meetings accompanied by their perfectly bilingual children, and it was the children who acted as interpreters with the teachers and lecturers”. Were they ‘entitled’ to do so? Was it not, rather, a hindrance to their own freedom and integration? Can a left-wing movement – or, to put it more broadly, a conscious and progressive society – really trade cultural and civil progress for an absurd linguistic niqab, just to spite Giorgia Meloni? It is political illiteracy.

The draft decree-law contains urgent measures to ensure the smooth start of the 2026/2027 academic year, to support the measures of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan falling within the remit of the Ministry of Education and Merit, and to promote the integration of foreign students within the school system as well as in higher education and research. Among other things, the decree-law would include a cap on the number of foreign pupils per class and a ban on the wearing of burqas and niqabs during school activities.

“Today, the Council of Ministers approved the decree on schools. A 30 per cent cap on the number of pupils in classes who do not have an adequate command of Italian, more resources to help them learn our language, and a ban on burqas and niqabs in schools. These are common-sense measures that do not divide, but help to achieve genuine integration, avoiding ‘ghetto’ classes and giving all pupils the same opportunities,” said Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on social media. “This is the direction we want to continue to follow,” she added, “a school system that promotes integration without compromising on the rules, that supports those facing the greatest difficulties, and that ensures everyone starts on an equal footing.”

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However, a warning to the contrary has come from the Quirinale. The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, speaking at the opening of the new school year in Amatrice, emphasised that “school is the most effective means of integration for those coming from other countries and for young people born in Italy who are the children of emigrants” and that its role is “to forge bonds, win the trust of families, and help prevent the formation of ghettos and the erection of barriers”. While Valditara described the Head of State’s speech as “wonderful”, he does not seem inclined to back down because, as he explained, “the phenomenon of ‘white flight’ worries me greatly: it exists worldwide but also affects Italy. If we reduce the proportion of pupils who do not speak our language to a balanced level, the other pupils might return. That is why I find the left’s controversies pointless: there is a risk here of sliding back towards the Alabama of the 1950s, with ghetto schools, those of segregation.” And he responded to those accusing the government of rushing through the legislation to stem Vannacci’s rise on the right: “We do not engage in rhetoric but in concrete action. And we have been working on these issues since well before FnV. The legislation on strengthening language support for newly arrived foreigners, which I strongly championed, dates from last year.”

The legislation should also include a requirement for the parents of foreign pupils to learn Italian: “If you speak Arabic at home,” said the minister, “you forget what you’ve learnt at school. International studies tell us that it is important for parents to know the language and keep track of what their children are doing at school.” On the ban on wearing the burqa and the niqab – which should also be included in the decree – Valditara is unequivocal: “It is a matter of civilisation; I am sorry for those who are stirring up controversy, but the burqa is the symbol of a violent patriarchal mindset that regards women as non-persons, and which we in the Lega have always opposed. Our values hold that women’s freedom is non-negotiable.” Regarding the inevitable organisational difficulties that the new decree will bring, Valditara explained that the regulation will assign a “coordinating role to local education authorities, which will be able to transfer surplus pupils to another nearby school, as is already the case today for surplus Italian pupils. Inaction will no longer be an option. Furthermore, we are planning a specific organisational model”. “It is clear,” he concluded, “that there will be scope for an exemption where it is not possible to transfer them to neighbouring schools, but the regulation is binding. For such cases, a budget of several million has been set aside to recruit teachers to strengthen Italian language provision for foreign nationals who remain at the same school. We are not making empty announcements, but building a system designed to work.”

The issue of the ‘excessive’ number of foreign pupils in classes: setting aside xenophobic nonsense, the crux of the matter – which can be resolved without having to build ‘more school complexes’ – is the level of language proficiency. Unfortunately, even in upper secondary classes, pupils are often placed who lack sufficient language skills. With the absurd rhetoric that ‘they cannot be placed in different streams because that would be segregation’, all too often they end up sitting idle at their desks, without any support: this is the real racism. It would be enough simply to count how many there are and organise basic courses to bring them up to an adequate language level: after all, we do the same for Erasmus students.

Second propaganda myth: the veil, or rather even ‘the burqa’. The two must be distinguished, and it is not always true that a liberal state should ban a cultural – or even religious – symbol. But here too there is a harmful reverse rhetoric: those who argue (even educationalists!) that this would lead families (Muslim, but not only) to withdraw their children from compulsory schooling. Yet compulsory schooling is, by definition, compulsory. The state has both the power and the duty to ensure that non-compliant families (and anti-vaxxer families) fulfil their obligations. 

All the more so at the start of the academic year leading up to the general election, Giorgia Meloni’s statements must therefore be put into perspective within this framework, which reveals them for what they are: for example, the much-discussed ban on the hijab and niqab makes no educational sense, but is justified by the fact that the collective imagination of Vannacci’s electoral base is haunted by the nightmare of quintessentially Italian grandchildren forced to write their first lines surrounded by budding jihadists. The same applies to the cap on foreign nationals: not only is there already legislation in place, but the actual national average is said to stand at just over 10 per cent. Far more significant, however, is the subtext of the proposal, which is indeed of educational interest.

It is clear that a strict cap on the number of foreign pupils – if by this we mean non-Italian-speaking new arrivals, rather than, say, a boy whose parents are Polish but who was born in Cerignola, or a Senegalese girl who has already successfully completed primary and lower secondary school – would entail a reorganisation of classes, creating smaller groups into which tiny sub-groups of foreign pupils would be placed, or separate courses exclusively for foreign pupils requiring special attention to catch up. Put like that, it would be such a progressive proposal as to seem revolutionary, also entailing the need to recruit new teaching staff, build new classrooms and make use of school premises throughout the entire day. It might even be considered a left-wing policy, but the voters are not interested: all that mattered to them – and to the Prime Minister – was that the announcement sounded right-wing; after all, nobody really knows what actually happens in schools once the gates are closed.

“Schools must be ‘places where no one feels excluded’,” said Cardinal Matteo Zuppi as he opened the proceedings of the Permanent Council of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, which he chairs. “We cannot accept that a child’s place of birth, economic or physical circumstances, or social background should determine their learning opportunities. A truly inclusive school is one of the most powerful tools for justice and peace.”

Mattarella also took the opportunity to remind us that “in schools, coexistence and respect must prevail, with violence banished. Violence takes many forms: explicit bullying, and groups and gangs forming outside the classrooms. Violence against teachers: the latest serious incident, which occurred just a few days ago, adds to those that have already taken place and have not been forgotten. Sometimes perpetrated by pupils, but more frequently by parents, who are far more culpable in this betrayal of their educational duty; shirking their fundamental partnership with teachers". Still on the subject of teachers, the Head of State emphasised their importance, saying that "a machine can never take the place of a teacher, however intelligent that machine may be. When a pupil raises their hand, the teacher can tell whether they are doing so to waste time or to better understand a concept, or whether they are asking a question; the teacher can tell if the pupil is unprepared or is trying to express a concept more clearly – a machine would struggle to do that. You yourselves have guided a machine, not the other way round".

Returning to the subject of artificial intelligence, the President emphasised that the role of schools is to “educate young people so that they are keen to harness the potential of their mobile phones to think for themselves, freely, rather than surrendering to someone else thinking for them; to seek out new horizons rather than resigning themselves to whatever the algorithm decides to offer us”. “In the digital world,” he emphasised, “artificial intelligence and social media are powerful drivers offering opportunities that were unimaginable until yesterday. Progress must not be hindered, feared or passively followed. It must be guided and continually monitored to ensure that the dignity of the person remains paramount. This is why it is essential that the younger generations – who are best equipped to use these new tools – grow up by balancing knowledge with humanity, and technological skills with solidarity.”

Mattarella then appealed to the young people: “Pupils are not merely users of the school system. Society needs their voice. Young people, take an even more active role in school life. Knowledge and study are important for life. Not abstract knowledge, or knowledge that is merely abstract. But knowledge that goes hand in hand with friendship, care for those around us, and responsibility towards others. This is the path to freedom. Our freedom is genuine only if freedom exists for everyone.” He went on to say that history was his favourite subject and that he shares with Alberto Angela not only a love of history but “also terrible handwriting”. “Look to the future with confidence; my generation has witnessed unimaginable transformations. Never look to the past. Best wishes,” concluded the Head of State.

Let’s start with the definition of ‘foreigner’. The Ministry of Education and Merit considers pupils who do not hold Italian citizenship to fall into this category. This category includes both children who have just arrived and those born and educated in Italy. Passports distinguish between nationalities, but educational needs do so far less clearly.

Second issue: what should the cap be? If the aim is to prevent Italians from becoming a minority, a consistent threshold would be 50 per cent. A limit of 30 or 20 per cent pursues a more restrictive objective: to ensure that they constitute a very large majority.

To assess the implications, the analysis relied on the 2024–2025 ministerial data on state primary and lower secondary schools: 21,558 school complexes, 3.67 million pupils, of whom approximately 520,000 are foreign nationals. Eighteen regions are covered; Valle d’Aosta and Trentino-Alto Adige are excluded. The data distinguishes between year groups within each school complex, but not between individual classes.

With a 20 per cent cap, the number of excess foreign pupils would be around 135,000. With a 30 per cent cap, it would be over 64,000; with a 50 per cent cap, over 12,000. The excess figures are calculated for each school complex and year group and then totalled: even the least restrictive threshold would therefore have consequences that are far from negligible.

What does ‘reallocate’ mean? Consider a school with a hundred pupils, thirty of whom are foreign nationals. With a 20 per cent cap, dividing these children across several classes solves nothing: thirty out of a hundred remains thirty out of a hundred. Arithmetic, unlike decrees, is hard to get round.

If the ten foreign pupils who were transferred were replaced by ten Italian pupils, the proportion would fall to 20 per cent. Without replacements, transferring ten would not be enough: there would still be twenty foreign pupils out of ninety, or 22.2 per cent. At least thirteen would need to be transferred.

The figures presented here are based on a one-to-one exchange, with subscriber numbers remaining unchanged and no exceptions. The total number of children affected would therefore be around 270,000 under the 20 per cent cap, 129,000 under the 30 per cent cap and 25,000 under the 50 per cent cap. However, this is a theoretical calculation, not a transfer plan: to determine whether it is feasible, it would be necessary to identify the receiving schools, check the number of places available for each year group and calculate the distances the pupils would have to travel.

Let’s take the municipality of Milan. Of the 217 school complexes considered, there are 20,537 foreign pupils out of a total of 68,650, almost 30 per cent. The breakdown by school complex and year group paints this picture.

To understand in practical terms what this would entail, let us take the two state primary schools in Milan at opposite ends of the municipal data spectrum for 2024–2025: the Setti Carraro dalla Chiesa school in Via Passione, in the Guastalla district, has the lowest percentage of pupils with non-Italian citizenship, 5 out of 231 (2.2 per cent); the Giuseppe Lombardo Radice school in Via Paravia, in the San Siro district, has the highest, 84 out of 103 (81.6 per cent). For the sake of simplicity, if we calculate the figures for the entire school complex, to bring the Lombardo Radice school down to 20 per cent, 64 foreign children would need to be transferred and replaced with an equal number of Italian children. However, the Setti Carraro school could accommodate a maximum of 41 before reaching its own limit: in return, 41 Italian children would have to move from Guastalla to San Siro. And that would not be enough, because there would still be 43 foreign pupils out of 103 at Lombardo Radice. Further schools and cross-transfers would therefore be required.

With a 20 per cent cap, even intra-city transfers would not be sufficient in Milan: the overall proportion would remain at almost 30 per cent. With pupil numbers unchanged, schools outside the municipality would need to be involved. And in primary schools alone, the average even slightly exceeds 30 per cent. Before promising a cap, it would therefore be necessary to explain who would have to travel through which neighbourhoods, and perhaps which municipal boundaries.

Which families should be excluded from their nearest school? Would the decision be based on a lottery, income, enrolment date or passport? In Boston, since 1966, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity’s voluntary programme has enabled the city’s pupils to attend state schools in neighbouring municipalities, with funding also provided for transport. Does the government intend to fund a scheme of this kind, or to impose school transfers?

How much would it cost? The data do not specify how many new classrooms are needed. If there were sufficient capacity in the receiving schools, none might be required, but the transport costs would remain. If, on the other hand, a quarter of the surplus pupils required new capacity, with 22 pupils per class, 1.8 full-time equivalent teachers, €50,000 per year per teacher and a 20 per cent surcharge for non-teaching staff and administration, the cost would be around 166 million per year with a 20 per cent cap, 79 million with a 30 per cent cap and 15 million with a 50 per cent cap. This is a scenario, not a budget: it excludes transport, canteens and new classrooms, and does not assess where the classes could be established.

Redistribution could also have unintended consequences. Wealthier Italian families might opt for private schools, exacerbating segregation in state schools. Schools might discourage ‘problematic’ enrolments so as not to exceed the cap. Foreign children might have to travel further than their Italian classmates.

The figures therefore suggest that even the 50 per cent cap would not be without consequences. Lowering it to 20 per cent would increase the theoretical number of transfers by more than tenfold. The main issue is not how many classes to create, but which children to transfer, where, and at whose expense.

If the aim were truly to address linguistic difficulties, a more appropriate criterion would not be citizenship, but recent entry into the Italian school system. A cap applied solely to new arrivals would affect a much smaller and more concentrated group. However, not all new arrivals are unfamiliar with Italian, and not all pupils who have been here for some time have mastered it. The best criterion would therefore be a documented need for language support, not citizenship, nor, on its own, the date of arrival. However, public data from the Ministry of Education does not allow the effects to be calculated on a school-by-school basis: it records citizenship, not the date of arrival in Italy nor knowledge of Italian.

Doubts remain as to whether Meloni’s proposal is linked to competition from Roberto Vannacci on the right, his ‘remigration’ and the issue of segregated classes. The suspicion is that the government is not so much concerned that Italian children might find themselves in a minority compared to foreign children, as that the number of Fratelli d’Italia voters might fall below that of Vannacci’s supporters.

Paolo Manasse, University of Bologna

The first myth to dispel is that publishers alter certain details in textbooks – an image here, an exercise there, the size of the maps and perhaps the title on the cover – to force families to buy so-called ‘new’ books every year, which are in fact old ones that have been recycled. This is not true: to be clear, they do engage in such practices (spoiler: they are publishing houses, not charities), but this does not necessitate any repurchase, as there are restrictions preventing changes to the text during a school cycle. In practice, if a student purchases a history textbook in the third year of sixth form, they will continue using the subsequent volumes of that edition right through to their A-levels, while any new edition will be intended for the next cohort of third-year sixth formers. What this rather underhand ploy entails – though a necessary one, given that the school sector keeps a large part of the Italian publishing industry afloat – is, in fact, the impossibility of buying textbooks at half price from those who used them the previous year and wish to sell them on. Essentially, the publishers’ cunning tactics harm those who prefer an old, tattered and greasy book to a brand-new one all to themselves.

Let’s now move on to the second cliché: the cover price is too high. This is not true. Looking through lists of books to be adopted for the coming school year, I find, for example, philosophy textbooks priced at 29 euros – and we’re talking about volumes of around six hundred pages. If I buy a novel of a similar size in a bookshop, I spend slightly less; if I’m looking for a reference book of the same size, especially if it’s illustrated, the cost easily rises well above thirty euros. To assert that textbook cover prices are too high is effectively to acknowledge that one has not visited a bookshop for some time and, more importantly, to deny value not only to the work of those who produced the textbook but also to the very content it conveys—the usefulness of which, beyond the narrow aim of securing a good grade, is recognised by only a tiny minority. Right here beside me, I still keep the textbooks from my specialised subjects at sixth form, which would not look out of place in university lecture theatres and which I still open when a doubt or a question arises. The most expensive volume cost 58,500 lire (the current edition of the same book costs 43.90 euros): spread over thirty years of loyal service, that seems to me a reasonable sum.

This leads to the third cliché: textbooks cost a fortune and are useless; either teachers don’t use them, or students don’t use them. In this case, the issue is more complex. There are compulsory textbooks and non-compulsory textbooks. The former are those containing texts and exercises that are worked through in a targeted manner, and it is therefore necessary to have them in order to practise them. Non-mandatory textbooks, on the other hand, are interpretative and argumentative in nature (the standard philosophy textbook, for example, but also those on art or history) and aim to foster critical thinking by presenting a particular perspective that coexists alongside different ones: in this case, it is important to have any textbook at all, not necessarily the one adopted by the course – so much so that often, formally or informally, lecturers say that similar titles are also acceptable. I would be wary of a lecturer who knows only the textbook they are teaching from and who recites it, providing, rather than explanations, a service for the blind. Refusing to purchase the textbook because the teacher does not use it means failing to understand that, in order to do without it, one must first be familiar with many of them.

It is true, however, that the textbook has changed its purpose and, having been for generations of pupils a source of more or less pleasant afternoon exertion, now seems to have been reduced to a blueprint for preparing lessons: teachers study them – perhaps to fill in unacknowledged gaps in their own knowledge – rather than the pupils, who instead rely on shorthand notes from lessons, sometimes leading to misunderstandings of undoubted humour, or on the repetition of dreadful slides, if not directly on oral tradition. One of the reasons why we are a far more ignorant nation than we were some time ago is that we have decided that textbooks are an unnecessary expense. Why pay for a resource that we can make do without, albeit inadequately? The saving is immediate, but in the long run, ignorance costs more.

In an effort to avoid going along with the crowd, I can offer a few remarks based on my own experience (a quarter of a century of setting Italian Literature exams for Arts and Languages students fresh out of secondary school). 

To read, one needs to see others reading. Those who have well-read parents and well-stocked home libraries are fortunate. For everyone else, there is the public library—or rather, there would be, because many of my pupils have never set foot in a library. This is because there was no school library, or no local library, or it was too far away, or nobody ever informed them of its existence. So, generally speaking, rather than lectures, what’s needed is a good school library (not difficult to put together these days, given that people die and leave behind shelves full of books that nobody wants); and, even before that, you need a teacher who takes you there and shows you how it’s done, and who has enough charisma to make you want to be like him or her (‘Having an idiot as a role model makes you think twice about studying the subject that reduced him to that state’: E. Albinati and F. Timi, Tuttalpiù muoio, Rome, Fandango Libri 2006, p. 105). For this reason, when drafting the new National Guidelines for literature syllabuses, we recommended that teachers ensure pupils become familiar with libraries: after all, at that age, it is perhaps the only educational trip that really serves a purpose.

Having ruled out those pupils who simply do not read at all, what is particularly striking about the others (who make up the majority) is their lack of direction, in the sense that they read at random. Reading at random is fine at the age of eleven, if you have no guidance (I used to read at random, and look at me now); it is not fine at twenty, after thirteen years of compulsory schooling. At best, they have read a few ‘school’ books such as Il fu Mattia Pascal and La coscienza di Zeno (they usually do not know what ‘fu’ means), but they have taken little from them beyond a few equally schoolish labels (the ‘inept’, the ‘double’ and other rubbish). Increasingly, they have been reading young adult fiction, a genre about which I know almost nothing but which strikes me as generally dreadful; increasingly, they read exclusively fantasy, meaning that for them there is no such thing as ‘fantasy literature’ but rather, in separate categories, ‘fantasy’ and ‘literature’, and they are interested in the former. Some have, by chance, read a bit of Kafka or a few nineteenth-century classics. But—and this is the surprising and bitter thing—school does not seem to have provided them with a guide as to what is worth reading and what, after the age of twenty, is too immature to read. University arrives either too late or at an inopportune moment, since it is not guaranteed that students will have the time to read truly significant books (this morning, for example, a master’s student in Anglo-American studies admitted having never read a single line of Bellow, Hemingway, Faulkner, or Roth, and showed no embarrassment). After the library card, this map is the thing that, in my view, every secondary school and every literature teacher should give to their pupils. And then hope for the best, of course.

The figures paint a picture that cannot be ignored. According to DESI 2026, just 54.27 per cent of Italians possess at least basic digital skills. The European Union average stands at 60.40 per cent, whilst the Digital Decade 2030 programme has set a target of 80 per cent of the population. Italy’s lag is therefore by no means marginal: it sets the country apart not only from the European average, but above all from the minimum threshold deemed necessary to support economic growth, innovation and social inclusion.

The picture looks even more worrying when considering the professional workforce. ICT specialists account for just 3.8 per cent of total employment in Italy, compared with a European average of 5 per cent and a target of 10 per cent by 2030. In practical terms, this means that the country would need to almost triple its pool of digital professionals in less than a decade. No industrial policy, no investment in digital infrastructure, and no strategy on artificial intelligence will be able to produce lasting effects without suitably trained people.

The point, however, runs even deeper. It would be a mistake to continue viewing digital technology as a field reserved for IT specialists. Artificial intelligence, cyber security, data science, cloud computing and automation are redefining all professions: doctors, lawyers, economists, teachers, architects, journalists, biologists and civil servants.

For this reason, university policy should definitively move away from a sectoral approach. It is not enough simply to increase enrolment in STEM courses, however essential that may be. What is needed is a cultural overhaul of the entire higher education system.

Five policy guidelines appear to be priorities today.

The first is the introduction of a national Digital Core Curriculum: a set of compulsory digital skills for all university students, regardless of their degree programme. Data literacy, the critical use of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data management and the principles of programming should form the basis of the new academic literacy.

The second concerns the strengthening of the ICT provision through an increase in the number of places available, scholarships and interdisciplinary programmes, accompanied by targeted policies to boost the number of women in technology disciplines, which remains significantly lower than European standards.

The third involves transforming collaboration with businesses, research centres and public administrations from an occasional experience into a structural component of training programmes.

The fourth calls for the university to be given a new mission: to be the leading national player in lifelong learning. The obsolescence of skills brought about by artificial intelligence makes micro-credentials, modular certifications and continuous professional development programmes essential for workers throughout their working lives.

The fifth point concerns the governance system. A growing proportion of public funding should be linked not only to research output, but also to universities’ ability to develop certified digital skills, enhance the employability of graduates in technology-intensive sectors and build partnerships with local innovation ecosystems.

There is also a need to establish a permanent national observatory on digital skills, capable of integrating university data, professional requirements and European indicators to guide the planning of training provision.

Competitiveness will not depend solely on investment in infrastructure or the adoption of artificial intelligence. It will depend above all on the calibre of the people who are able to design, use and manage those technologies. The DESI 2026 clearly shows that Italy’s real bottleneck is not merely technological, but first and foremost educational. Universities are not simply one of the players in the digital transformation: they constitute its most strategic infrastructure.

Italy boasts world-renowned scientific excellence, entrepreneurial skills and creativity. What is lacking is a critical mass of digital skills capable of meeting European challenges. Whilst the Draghi Report highlights the urgent need to revitalise Europe’s competitiveness through innovation, research and human capital, Italy’s response must necessarily begin with the universities. It is in university lecture theatres, even before research laboratories or data centres, that the country’s technological sovereignty and its ability to compete in the knowledge economy are built.

Pierpaolo D’Urso
, Professor of Statistics and Data Science for Policy-Making, Dean of the Faculty of Political Science, Sociology and Communication at Sapienza – University of Rome

Member of Comstat

In Italy, as is well known, there are two inviolable rules: the first is that, whenever there is a problem on a social, national or global scale, schools are expected to rush to find a solution; the other is that for every petition there is an identical counter-petition, perhaps even with the same signatories. It so happens, therefore, that in the very same context of excessive heat, there are those who nevertheless realise that the Italian school system has the longest summer break (the comparative data on this point vary widely and reach hyperbolic figures, much like the mileage of the cycling races described by Stefano Benni); this situation causes serious hardship for parents, who have nowhere to send their youngest children for three months, and therefore ask the school to remain open beyond the end of term established half a century ago. Summer school should therefore be Schrödinger’s school, simultaneously open and closed, so as to satisfy both the pupils who complain about the heat and the parents who complain that they cannot afford to have their children at home for three months.

Then there are the air-conditioners; which, in fact, aren’t there. Or rather – as Luciano Capone explained very well in the Saturday 5th edition of Il Foglio – an inadequate sum was allocated for air-conditioning in schools, which at best allowed for the air-conditioning of a few classrooms; a sum incomparably lower than that allocated during the Covid pandemic by the Conte government for wheeled desks (which, however, when sent hurtling down the corridor at top speed, can provide the occupant with a fleeting sensation of coolness) and paltry compared to the money squandered on the 110 per cent tax bonus, perhaps to suggest to pupils that they are better off at home, especially if their parents have renovated it – but parents do not want to keep them at home and are trying to offload them onto the state education system. It should also be noted that, whilst the installation of air-conditioning in classrooms has been enthusiastically undertaken by many schools, it is taking place against a backdrop of widespread dilapidation of school buildings. Do you remember Renzi’s famous ‘Buona Scuola’ reform, the only sensible reform of the system in recent times and, as such, opposed by everyone – headteachers, teachers, pupils, parents, trade unions and passers-by? The prevailing rhetoric at the time was that it was a waste to hire new teachers when there was no toilet paper in the toilets. Setting aside that rather unflattering comparison regarding the duties of teaching staff, the fact remains: many schools have undertaken even substantial refurbishments, yet there is still a shortage of toilet paper.

Let alone the ‘influencers’, then. It is worth recalling that the education system had protested vigorously against them during the Fridays for Future movement: between 2018 and 2019, numerous schools had even endorsed the weekly absences of pupils following Greta Thunberg’s example – albeit rather short-sighted – so that they could demonstrate against the use of plastic (which would soon prove rather useful for anti-Covid face masks) and high electricity consumption (read: air-conditioners). Since the rule holds that for every petition there is always a counter-petition, it will be interesting to see how many of those who protested yesterday against other people’s air-conditioners are now protesting in favour of having them installed for themselves, or how many of them stayed away from school on those pleasantly breezy Fridays to halt the climate apocalypse, and now want to keep schools closed for a further three weeks because the climate apocalypse has not been halted by their absence.

Teachers of older pupils also know that a classic winter scene at school involves the school representative going round the classrooms with a portable thermometer to check that the temperature in each room reaches the minimum required for lessons to take place. Heating systems are, in fact, often outdated, whilst draughts never go out of fashion, and, when the cold becomes unbearable, pupils have to go home (much to the delight of their parents, I imagine, who would rather have them anywhere but there). If we are heading towards a future of extreme temperatures – a future that has already begun – postponing the start of term because it is too hot could lead to an automatic extension of the winter holidays because it is too cold, in defiance of the 215 days of teaching stipulated by the regulations.

How can we move forward? No one knows. The impression is that the problem lies further back in the system and that, before ensuring a suitable temperature in every classroom, we need to ask ourselves what we’re actually doing at school, given that we have to sit there sweating or shivering. In this regard, too, two typically Italian rules apply, which are obviously at odds with one another: the first is that what counts most at school is physical attendance – in terms of the number of teaching days, the total number of hours teachers are on duty, the time spent by teachers in the classroom staring into space, and passive acquiescence to tedious monologues passed off as civic education or refresher courses; the other is that this attendance must be as brief as possible, since lessons last only half a day for nine months, and it is not uncommon for schools to remain ghost buildings for hours, days or weeks. It is clear that, if the climate breaks down, so too must the school: for example, by ensuring lessons in air-conditioned classrooms are staggered across different time slots; or by making use of the cooler hours (never mind if they are inconvenient for parents: they must resign themselves to the idea that school is for their children, not for them); making the most of distance learning whenever in-person attendance is not strictly required; tailoring timetables to the actual educational needs of individual pupils rather than to class groups lacking uniformity and coherence; and, as a last resort, taking pupils to have lessons in cool locations appropriate to what is being taught at any given time – such as museums, shopping centres and public gardens.

It should be borne in mind that such proposals are likely to prove electorally counterproductive, whereas merely complaining about the heat and the cold without taking concrete action is often perceived as a more effective strategy (another ‘made in Italy’ pair of contradictory rules: everyone is always complaining about everything; yet anyone who attempts to introduce change is swiftly discredited). However, if the objective is not merely to lose an election but to do so in spectacular fashion, one option would be to propose exploiting a technicality in Article 12 of the well-known Law 517/1977. By changing the start date of the school year, the text also emphasised that ‘school buildings and equipment may be used outside school hours for activities that fulfil the school’s role as a centre for cultural, social and civic development’. Since work and productivity undoubtedly promote culture, society and civilisation, you could propose that private organisations enter into agreements to use school buildings and equipment for events and activities they deem appropriate, in return for funding structural refurbishments for which they would be explicitly credited; air-conditioners work just the same, even when they have a sponsor’s or benefactor’s name written on them. It would constitute an immediate solution to every problem. Yet it will never be adopted.

This thought occurred to me upon learning of the forthcoming closure of Rai Scuola, which on digital terrestrial channel 57 is to be replaced by a programme showcasing local excellence and village festivals. On this matter, Enrico Bucci expressed his views in "Il Foglio" in a highly informed and entirely convincing manner; I have nothing to add to his article. Whilst the closure of Rai Scuola is certainly ill-advised, I am more concerned – thinking of the many cases similar to that of my pupil – with asking whether television today is truly a useful vehicle for learning, if not, indeed, the ideal way to reach a vast audience that is potentially – and perhaps unwittingly – eager to learn something.

The pupil I told you about did not know the Enlightenment well enough to realise that it was precisely in the 18th century that, for the first time, certain educators began presenting content to learners via illustrated plates which, however, rather than being bound into a book as was customary, were placed inside a cube-shaped box that served as a sort of multi-panel frame. Without realising it, those educators had invented educational television, having realised two things: that attention is best captured by a screen (in the broadest sense) capable of isolating content from the rest of the world; and that the tedium of lessons can be combated through the judicious use of the unusual and variety.

Rai Scuola has been complying with the first of these requirements since well before it was called Rai Scuola. Without even mentioning “Non è mai troppo tardi”, through which Maestro Manzi attempted to teach the Italian masses – who were still struggling with reading, writing and arithmetic – to read, write and do maths; and leaving aside its predecessor “Telescuola”, which in 1958 launched with the ambitious project of providing supplementary education courses for those living in areas without secondary schools, it suffices to recall that in the 1990s, Rai’s late-night programming rivalled the racy programmes on local channels with its lecture-style lessons on trigonometry or the historical geography of the ancient world – though it must be acknowledged that, with hindsight, it is difficult to tell whether the aim was to keep the population awake or to provide an effective antidote to insomnia. There were even those who recorded the lectures at night and watched the videotapes the following afternoon or evening, in a rudimentary attempt at a video podcast that made up for the lack of opportunity to attend those same lectures in a university lecture theatre.

The great merit of Rai Scuola was therefore to provide a framework for educational content – an oasis of learning that previously stood apart from a context lacking in stimuli (the lack of secondary schools, which the old ‘Telescuola’ programme used to compensate for) and which now, instead, offers a refuge from a context where stimuli are excessive, allowing pupils to focus for a quarter of an hour or half an hour on a topic of their own interest, without being distracted by constant notifications or the excessive workload that parents impose on their children for fear that they will grow up without any hobbies. Where the internet has, however, partly fallen short is perhaps the other aspect: combating boredom with novelty, as eighteenth-century educators did by turning the cube; not because of the scientific quality of the programmes, but due to the intrinsic structure of the medium itself.

Television was the main source of information for the masses from roughly the late 1950s to the late 1990s. I am not referring solely to news programmes; I mean precisely the transmission of implicit information concerning speech, behaviour and dress. ‘The telly said so’ was the assertion used to confirm the truth of something: just as television assured viewers through entertainment that they would be entertained, through films that they would see exactly what had been shown at the cinema, and through news programmes that they would have a front-row seat to unfolding events, so too, through educational programmes, it conveyed to them certified, sound and, broadly speaking, essential knowledge. The success of Rai Scuola and similar initiatives was, in fact, to be measured in terms of credibility, rather than in terms of a inevitably meagre audience.

What has changed, however, is the status of truth. Accustomed to a television that lies or deceives, viewers have shifted the focus of their beliefs to other media; this does not mean that these are more reliable than television – as demonstrated by the fact that many people fall for fabricated news stories and give credence to doctored images – but rather that television is no longer regarded as the benchmark of truth, with serious consequences for the acquisition of knowledge. A television that is not trusted is a television that cannot teach anything. Worse still, it is a medium that bores, since, having been supplanted by other forms of communication, it has lost its initial sense of novelty and variety, ultimately having the same effect – a detrimental one, in Italy – as the usual books. The result is that, nowadays, suggesting to someone that they watch a TV programme to learn something is tantamount to telling my aforementioned pupil to stop watching my videos and come and listen to my live lesson. In which I say exactly the same things, but I’m incredibly boring.