The data on the first test confirms the preference of the graduates for tracks on current affairs and for the argumentative text, while poetic analysis remains at the bottom of the ranking. It is not the students’ fault, but a signal that the school should question itself on
The data on the choices of graduates in the first Italian test have arrived and allow us to reread the traces in the way in which they were received by the students. The most chosen track was that of Mario Calabresi on fatigue, followed by Frank Furedi on borders and by Wenke Husmann on enchantment and wonder, while the analysis of the poetic text dedicated to Cesare Pavese, with I will pass through Piazza di Spagnaended up in the queue, chosen by just 5.3 percent of candidates, with practically irrelevant percentages in technical and professional institutes.
The data should not be read with moralism, because there is no more noble trace than another and because type C, like type B, is fully part of the test, responds to expected skills and can give rise to mature, personal and well-argued papers. It would therefore be wrong to contrast literature with current events, as if those who choose Pavese were automatically more cultured and those who choose Calabresi, Furedi or Husmann were only looking for a shortcut.
The question, if anything, is another, and more interesting: when a fairly affordable poem, signed by a well-known author, is chosen by such a low percentage of students, we must ask ourselves whether that escape says something not only about the students, but also about the teaching proposed in the three-year period and, more broadly, about the place reserved for poetry in our daily lives.
The trace about Pavese, which many students will probably have recognized as a familiar presence, brought with it a subtle difficulty, because in addition to the recognizability of the author and behind the apparent sentimental immediacy of the poem, one of the most painful nuclei of his work was moving, that is, love as an experience sought, pursued, imagined, often unreciprocated and destined to transform into solitude, according to that biographical and poetic line that the verses dedicated to Constance Dowling make particularly evident. Careful reading of the text was enough to frame this interior world, happily exposed word after word.
And who knows if, among the candidates most ready to build personal connections, someone will have thought of Alice by Francesco De Gregori and to that Cesare lost in the rain/has been waiting for his ballerina love for six hoursan image that refers precisely to a Pavese delivered to a love experienced as waiting, wound, lack, impossibility. Perhaps no one, because together with poetry, songwriting also struggles to find a place in our days and, above all, in our classrooms, except in an episodic and unstructured way. Pavese’s literary track allowed one to spend a busy morning, with the anxiety of the exam, certainly, but in the company of a text capable of making one reflect on the words, term by term, without presenting excessive complexity.
Yet, it seems that the mere presence of a text in verse has discouraged many candidates, unaccustomed to reading poetic texts and considering them as living, present, necessary objects. If poetry is increasingly marginal in society and if at school it is treated above all as a training ground on which to practice paraphrase, rhetorical figures and technique, it is unlikely that it will be attended unless explicitly requested. A real damage to art, to complexity and to entire generations. The success of topical tracks, however, signals an opposite trend.
Calabresi, with Getting up at dawnoffered a reflection on concrete and daily fatigue, while Husmann, with the theme of enchantment, opened a softer and more personal space on wonder and the ability to remain open to surprise. They are accessible traces close to a generational lexicon that allows the student to immediately enter into the discussion, and for this very reason they can become excellent writing opportunities, as long as they do not transform into a list of generic considerations on life, on commitment, on beauty or on the need to get excited again, perhaps using a colloquial lexicon and without a real attempt at cultural in-depth analysis.
The track on Saragat and the Constituent Assembly, chosen by a smaller number of students, perhaps asked for a more solid familiarity with the civil, historical and institutional lexicon of democracy. The less than brilliant result of the scientific track built starting from Piero Bianucci and popularization is also surprising, at least in part, because the theme of creativity in science would have allowed us to think about a very current issue, that is, the relationship between method, intuition, public communication, pop language and the socialization of knowledge. The fact that it has remained in the background may indicate that, when science is proposed as a cultural discourse and not just as disciplinary content, many students still struggle to appreciate it and reason about it, as if humanistic knowledge, i.e. the topic to be written, and scientific knowledge, i.e. the required content, belonged to two separate worlds.
Overall, the choices of the graduates seem to reflect a search for security, rather than a simple thematic preference. Security does not necessarily mean opportunism, it must be reiterated especially in times of easy misunderstanding, because a student can choose Calabresi or Husmann because he really has something to say about effort or enchantment. However, when the more textual, more literary or more specific traces are systematically avoided, it is legitimate to ask whether the school, over the three-year period, has worked enough on reading as a living, interpretative, risky skill, and not just as an exercise in recognizing authors, currents and rhetorical figures.
The challenge for the school lies here: to ensure that, in front of a poem by Pavese, one perceives the opportunity for an analysis of a text and of oneself, without the sensation of entering a dusty and mined territory prevailing.
