University professors protest: Marx and Spinoza missing from new syllabuses

Teachers and former university lecturers do not like the new philosophy syllabuses in high schools: authors such as Marx and Spinoza, Fichte and Schelling are missing, complain 60 professors and intellectuals, including Massimo Cacciari, Giuseppe Licata and Gaetano Lettieri, in an open letter. They consider the elimination of these thinkers to be a "disaster" for the cultural and critical education of students and argue that philosophy is necessary to develop critical thinking and an understanding of complexity, requiring a significant and high-quality presence. The draft is in online consultation until 31 May. The aim is to introduce the reform from the school year 2027/28.

The list of authors that appears in the new programmes, according to the teachers who signed the open letter, owes "more than a debt to that fanciful project of 'cultural hegemony' that a government in retreat is trying to leave, with the legislature almost over, as a poisoned meatball to the world of schools, teachers and, above all, the new generations".

The president of the Commission for the Revision of the School Curriculum, pedagogue Loredana Perla, responds by first of all thanking the signatories of the appeal for their thoughts. "This is in fact the moment," she explains, "in which a democratic consultation is taking place with all the people interested in the best formulation of the National Indications and every contribution will be taken into consideration. He then adds that in recent days a lengthy meeting was held with all the associations that deal with philosophy in Italia, "in the context of which, in addition to appreciation for the formulation of the Indications, useful proposals for changes were made".

Perla herself specifies that throughout the whole process of developing the New Directions there has been constant consultation with the Philosophy Societies belonging to the National Council of Philosophy and with the Italian philosophical community and points out that the very approach to the teaching of philosophy, according to the proposal of the New Directions, consists of two complementary and integrable paths a path that starts with the problems that philosophy is able to address, and then contextualises these problems with precise references to texts and authors from the history of thought, and a path that proposes a diachronic reconstruction of the history of philosophy, highlighting the fundamental questions that philosophers over the centuries have addressed.

"The debate on who is and who is not among the philosophers listed runs the risk of being linked only to the second approach and of misunderstanding the entire structure of the indications", concludes Perla, who also points out that, "although the names of all the philosophers in the history of thought are not mentioned (and how would a complete list be possible?), the movements and currents to which they belong are indicated" and finally highlights "that what is proposed are, in fact, indications. They refer to the freedom and experience of the teacher in constructing the course of study, while naming unavoidable authors, but he does not consider it necessary to impose on teachers an obligatory list or a sequence of authors to be treated'.