Goodbye geohistory and AI 'enters' mathematics, here are the new curricula for high schools

Goodbye Geohistory: in the first two years History and Geography return as separate disciplines, each with its own methodological specificity and, for Geography, its own textbooks. Mathematics also changes, which will also have the task of providing the concepts and language behind AI systems. Artificial intelligence entering high schools, and philosophy also opening up to 'written' subjects. These are some of the novelties contained in the national indications for the licei, strongly desired by Minister Giuseppe Valditara, drafted by the commission of experts and from today, 22 April, the subject of a wide-ranging public consultation. From the ministry they say that 'this is not a simple revision of programmes: it is a structural rethinking of the educational function of the Liceo, of the relationship between disciplines and between school and society'. Let us look in detail at the main changes.

As mentioned, Geography recovers its scientific autonomy and returns to forming citizens capable of orienting themselves in the complexity of the contemporary world. History, on the other hand, extends its time span up to the Chinese turning point and the new geopolitical balances, with a scan that progressively opens up from the Euro-Western core to the new global scenarios.

The new Mathematics Directions do not merely reorganise the thematic nuclei: they propose a profound rethinking of the discipline as an intellectual experience. Among the main novelties, error is recognised as an integral part of intellectual work, a fruitful moment to be crossed with awareness, not a stigma to be avoided. For the first time, the indications explicitly deal with the subject of artificial intelligence, entrusting mathematics with the task of providing the concepts and language underlying AI systems. The fifth year then introduces a structured space for in-depth study in which students connect mathematics to science, the history of ideas or their own personal interests. An interdisciplinary opening to the history of mathematical thought that repositions the discipline: no longer an ivory tower, but a system of ideas in dialogue with all areas of knowledge.

In implementation of Law 132/2025 and the European AI Act, artificial intelligence enters high schools not as an object of technological fascination, but as critical territory to be governed. Students will have to learn how to use it consciously, but also how to question it, recognise its limits, and protect their own intellectual freedom. Mathematical thinking and critical thinking become the two levers through which the school guards the autonomy of the subject in the age of algorithms.

The revival of reading as an identity practice is another of the red threads of the new Directions. The purpose of literary teaching is that students take pleasure in reading, and that from what they read they derive tools to better understand themselves and the world. A simple formulation, almost disarming, but of great pedagogical density, writes the ministry. The literature of the past is presented as a mirror of human experience to be related to the still immature one of the students. Reading the classics is not an act of deference to the canon: it is a way of understanding where one comes from, what one thinks, what one wants.