Is it possible to lose a foundation stone of one’s culture without even having identified it as such? This year will be my last year teaching at the university; I’ve decided to throw in the towel three years before retirement age. There are a number of reasons behind this decision, but one is definitely the changed situation in the classroom. Even at post-graduate level, it is getting more and more difficult to feel that one has the attention of students or that something really useful is happening during the lessons.
Of course, teachers have been reporting a loss of control in school classrooms for decades. I remember in the early 1970s a high school teacher working in a poor area of Boston telling me she might as well simply turn the radio on as loud as possible and spend her lessons listening to music. Friends in Milan today, teaching at the so-called scuole professionali, report similar experiences: the near impossibility of making oneself heard, the need to resort to more and more aggressive tactics to focus the minds of the pupils, many of whom simply don’t want to be there and can’t see the point. Having youth unemployment at high levels for so long in Italy hardly helps.
Nevertheless, it was always assumed that such problems were specific to certain social situations or conditions of economic deprivation, that there would always be “good schools,” where “bright children” motivated by “attentive parents” behaved with respect and diligence and hence made useful progress. It seemed that if you had “well brought-up” youngsters and “serious teachers,” the formula of traditional teaching would go on working forever. Then came the computer, the Internet, and, crucially, the smartphone.
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