In 2019, I posted about how I believed Italian schools needed to adapt, including the teaching style.
History was one of the subjects I thought about. To cut a long story short, I hoped for a methodology that would focus on comprehending historical processes in order to understand the modern world rather than on the tedious and pointless memorization of sterile notions. This strategy would greatly increase student engagement in addition to being significantly more useful for their everyday life.

Today, I just so happened to glance at a tweet on my timeline that, in my opinion, unequivocally supports what I was saying. I’m talking about this one:

In essence, the girl in the video claims that because she thinks that subjects like history are pointless and dull, she is not interested in seeing churches, monuments, and other sites of historical significance when she travels to a city. Going to clubs is something she enjoys doing instead. She ends the video by saying that many of her friends have the same opinion, which I suspect to be extremely true.

To me, it is not really helpful to react with indignation by having extremely harsh, bordering on insulting opinions about the girl, as many tweets in response to the video do. Everyone is free to think as he or she wishes and therefore can legitimately feel that subjects as fundamental to understanding the world around us as history are completely useless. Nevertheless, I believe that instances like this one should prompt us to consider why so many students view certain subjects in this manner. This step, in my opinion, is crucial to comprehending how schools must adjust to social change in order to reclaim their original purpose of forming citizens capable of taking the notorious social elevator, whose doors appear to be sadly and inexorably closing as years go by.

PS: By the way, visiting monuments and going to clubs are not mutually exclusive, as they are usually done at different times.

Credits

This post was written with the help of DeepL and Quillibot.

Featured image by Frits Ahlefeldt.

Published by admin