A ministerial commission proposes to move the reading of Alessandro Manzoni’s “The Betrothed” to the fourth year of high school. The reason? Today, students are used to short communication and struggle to understand long texts.
“This reform should not be done.” We could resort to a paraphrase of one of the most famous lines from The Betrothed to summarize the current position of the Minister of Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditarawith respect to one of the proposals for the revision of high school curricula put forward in recent days by a ministerial commission made up of high school and university teachers.
Proposal according to which the reading of the nineteenth-century masterpiece by Alessandro Manzoni it should be moved from the second to the fourth year of high school. Valditara he actually showed himself skeptical: «It’s a proposal from the commission. It has its own reasonableness but I have some doubts, because I believe that The betrothed are particularly educational even for a 14-15 year old. I think it is premature to take this innovation for granted.”
In itself, the change suggested by the commission would not have anything particularly traumatic or revolutionary and, as observed by the commission itself Valditarait does not even appear devoid of its own raison d’être. But it is precisely this raison d’être that raises questions and some worried considerations about Italian education as a whole. To support the two-year postponement of the reading of Manzoni’s novel, the cornerstone of our country’s literature and a text which – “rinsing the clothes in the Arno” – laid the foundations of today’s Italian language, the editors of the draft of the new guidelines for high schools state: “As is evident, The betrothed they are no longer a “contemporary classic”. In the second year of the two-year period, at the teacher’s discretion, as an alternative to the novel by ManzonIt will therefore be possible to have students read in their entirety other less complex books from a linguistic point of view (for example those listed in the previous lines), postponing the reading of the The betrothedin full or in pieces, in the fourth year of the study course”.
Meanwhile, one could object that the definition of “contemporary classic” – recovered from late nineteenth-century school curricula – is not only outdated but a contradiction in terms, given that a classic is necessarily and always contemporary (i.e. able to speak to us as it did to our predecessors), otherwise it would not be classic. Furthermore, many of the authors who are suggested as possible substitutes are not at all less linguistically complex than Manzoni de The betrothed (which signals a certain disorientation on the part of the members of the commission): think of names like Aldo Palazzeschi, Beppe Fenoglio, Cesare Pavese, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Leonardo Sciascia And Giuseppe Pontiggianot to mention foreigners such as Stendhal, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Henry James And Kafka.
What is causing concern, however, is above all the reason for the postponement: since today’s students are not familiar with reading “long texts” (which they therefore struggle to understand) and vice versa are “used to short communication”, it is considered appropriate – rather than trying to mitigate it at least at school – to fully support this drift, surrendering to the fact that the new generations have increasingly limited cognitive abilities. It is a path that seems to deny the intentions of the “school of merit” – the educational and didactic approach promoted, on paper, by the current government – and which rather resembles a surrender to that downward leveling which has characterized, with strong accelerations in more recent times, the last half century of education in Italy. Furthermore, the fact that difficulties in understanding a text are so widespread and serious even among high school students calls into question, and puts under accusation, the entire cycle of studies that these students have previously carried out, i.e. in the years of primary and lower secondary school (elementary and middle school); as well as, obviously, highlighting the limits – if not actually sanctioning the failure – of the remote teaching to which today’s high school students have long been forced during the pandemic period.
Yesterday, come on Republicthe professor Claudio Giuntacoordinator of the ministerial commission for national literature indications, wrote that «The betrothed are incomprehensible to many students: incomprehensible, therefore discouraging, frustrating, and therefore useless. It will be good for these students to begin their career as “serious” readers with an objectively very difficult book or with an easier book, and then arrive two years later, adequately mature, at the difficulty of Manzoni?”.
Assuming and not granting that the books proposed as alternatives – as has already been said – are “easier”, the real risk deriving from considering The betrothed an “objectively difficult” novel is to then find yourself with students who, once they leave high school, ask themselves: “Manzoni! Who was he?”. Without even imagining that I am quoting it, Manzoni.
