A few days ago, during the Piazzapulita television program , Carlo Calenda recalled that one student in two does not even read a book a year in Italy. In fact, this is a very worrying and burdened with little predictable consequences which reveals more than any other statistical indication in which conditions the Italian school is. I and to do so it will not be enough to buy new computers or prolong school hours, even if these are provisions that are desirable in other ways.
In Italy the problem is only more evident, but it is present, even if with different proportions, everywhere in the world, and seems to be due to cultural changes so profound as to impose a comprehensive revision of the didactics. To proceed in this direction, however, we need to understand the reasons for this growing disaffection with reading, and above all we need to understand what factors may have strengthened it so much in recent decades.
A valuable contribution in this sense comes from the scholars of Palo Alto , according to whom the mentality of young people today shows a growing tendency to pragmatism and “simplification”. For example – they note – “in most American and European universities the problem of relevance of a modern university education is widespread ; in other words, there is a strong demand for notions that are immediately useful to life.
The topic was addressed by Heinz Eulau in an incisive and far-sighted way in a study of over forty years ago, testifying to how deep the roots of the problem are. In his opinion, the race for what-is-needed (to Relevance with a capital R) precisely because it is supposed to be a legitimate request and a panacea to overcome the difficulties of acquiring a university education, has in itself the germs of its own destruction”. According to what can be read in Eulau’s study ( Reason and Relevance –
Reflections on a madness of our time , Student Lawer , 1972), university students – but this also applies today to those of upper secondary schools – are increasingly showing a dual need. On the one hand, to simplify and reduce every phenomenon to a single causal explanation: thus “environmental problems are due to greed for profit; prison problems to the brutality of the guards; the war is due to economic imperialism; and so on”.
On the other hand, the need for “the contents of teaching and research must be fresh and up-to-date, like the morning radio newspaper, seems increasingly pressing. Considering events from a historical and philosophical point of view means escaping from one’s responsibilities ”. In the end, the dominant and most effective tendency is also the most immediately gratifying:
This widespread attitude – which saves time and energy by favoring the spread of an increasingly intrusive cultural conformism – is also manifested in the more specific field of literature and its teaching.