Rereading Tullio De Mauro for the new school year.
Publisher Laterza has recently published a booklet (Passione civile, Bari 2024) that collects some articles and speeches given by Professor emeritus Tullio De Mauro (Torre Annunziata, 1932 - Rome, 2017). As the new school year is about to begin, we recommend you read the last chapter dedicated to school, a “lesson” the professor held in Florence in 2011.
Tullio De Mauro addresses “Italian schooling in seven points”:
- The popular conquest of the need for education
- Long-standing uninterest of politics for schools
- Slow adaptation to new educational needs
- Increase in formal education
- Linguistic “teach-yourself”
- Modest circulation of intellectual culture
- The threat of alphanumerical literacy regression
The Italian cultural situation and the serious data on loss of literacy “hardly interest anyone, except for a few economists such as Ignazio Visco, Tito Boeri, and Luigi Spaventa,” De Mauro wrote. “They have wondered why, since the nineties, the country has stopped growing. And they answered by showing how the progressive complication of productive processes would have required a new quality in educational levels and skills – a shift that has not occurred and the country has suffered. However, they were not heeded either. It’s hard to listen to a wandering old linguist who, instead of addressing Gaelic phonology or Ossetic etymologies, spends his time on these issues. Nonetheless, the facts are clear, even if we ignore them. And if we ignore them, they well have their revenge.”
Today, more than ever before, Italian school needs to be enlivened by Tullio De Mauro’s civil passion. Let’s not ignore the data and facts that he exposed!
We wish you all a great school year!
