Minister Cingolani: do we want to study 4 times the Punic Wars or impart a more modern education?

The words that the Minister of Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani, spoke on the TG2 Post program the day before yesterday, talking about education, are causing much discussion. “We need more technical culture, starting in schools,” Cingolani said. “Especially at a time of very fast and impressive digital transformation like the one we are experiencing. Ten years from now we will need digital managers for health, for energy, jobs that don’t even exist today. Here the issue is whether we continue to do three, four times the Punic Wars over the course of twelve years of schooling or whether we maybe do them once but start to impart a bit more advanced type of education, a bit more modern starting with languages, digital. You have to change the set-up and then you have to change at advanced levels the recruitment mechanisms. Because if we continue to recruit researchers, innovators with our methodologies we are not in the international standards. If we look at the statistics we see that Italy, with the same population with France, England and other big countries, has 30 percent fewer innovators, fewer researchers. That’s where it all starts. We have to understand that innovation is the way to win all the challenges of the future: from one-health, the health of the inhabitant of planet Earth, to the environment, to sustainable manufacturing, and this is something we have to understand and do as soon as possible.”

In short: according to Cingolani Italy needs more technical culture to cope with the rapid changes in the labor market and to face the challenges of the future that necessarily pass through innovation, but many are turning their noses up at the unfortunate comparison with the study of history advanced with the example of the “Punic Wars.” A controversy immediately ensued, involving social media and even some “signatures” of major newspapers, from Massimo Gramellini in Corriere della Sera (“Study four times badly the Punic Wars, maybe not. But a couple of times well, one in middle school and one in high school, would be of great use even to future digital managers”), to Marcello Bramati in Panorama (“Minister Roberto Cingolani’s exit on the uselessness of the Punic Wars is yet another pummeling to the humanities,” “history repeats itself and this would be enough to prove that studying it is necessary.” Historian Giovanni Sabbatucci, professor of contemporary history at Rome’s “La Sapienza” University, on the other hand, told ADN Kronos, "The joke by the Minister of Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani, about the Punic Wars being studied three or four times in school is an unfortunate and unfounded example. It is a false statement. It is unfortunate that a minister would make such an example. It sounds like an attack on history, or rather an attack on the structure of school study: let us hope it does not pass.

Finally, the Post proposed a brief review of the Punic Wars. Because, lest there be any misunderstanding, studying them is always useful anyway.

Minister Cingolani: do we want to study 4 times the Punic Wars or impart a more modern education?

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.