In a country like ours, where the true heritage for a new and possible economic development could be art, from open-air art to art kept within the walls of the most admired museums in the world, the joke of the Minister of Cultural Heritage Alberto Bonisoli “…I would abolish History of art. In high school it was a pain” continues to make us incredulous that there is not the right sensitivity to such an important issue.
It all started in 2010 with the Reform Gelmini, which provided for a reduction in the hours dedicated to art history both in high schools and in technical and professional institutes, all with a view to optimizing the total number of hours and the already suffering resources of the school.
Then came the 2015 Good School that with a second definitive draft the bill definitively reducing the time dedicated to historical-artistic subjects. Not even the demonstrations carried out by associations such as ANISA (National Association of Art History Teachers) were able to stop this line of conduct of the then government. A bad start that could now also end with a further and drastic cut in hours and who knows if a decision already made is hidden behind Bonisoli's sentence, with step-by-step formulas starting from technical institutes and high schools and so on... In fact, the note dated 19 April 2018 from the Miur communicates that in the first two years of professional institutes there will no longer be lessons in the history of art.
We cannot fail to realize that we are faced with a real and great contradiction, on the one hand we have institutions and associations such as UNESCO, FAI and Italia Nostra and many others more focused on more specific territories which are increasingly active in the promotion and protection of heritage of our country, on the other hand, politics tends to want to forget every possible memory, thus creating a generation that will be able to compare Giotto's works to a form of Street Art, so much of a technique on the wall it is, and perhaps share with the superimposition of emoticons offered by the new forms of communication of social networks.
This choice is truly paradoxical. Not teaching children the subject of art history can only produce ignorance and what today could be the driving force of a new economy could translate into mere archeology of obtuse thinking.
We know that art is not only an expression of beauty, but encompasses all of history from the primitives to today, represents the evolution of man, keeps secrets and speaks of facts that could not yet be written. Art knows how to pass on all the facets of who we are today and which scholars and art historians can interpret, thus providing us with a correct reading.
Not giving young people the possibility of being able to understand the evolution of the world through the history of art is blinding their future and making them subject only to sterile contemporary creative formulas and an end in themselves.
One wonders if in the next number of hours to be cut there aren't also subjects such as history or the Italian language.
"Was it true glory? Posterity will judge…"
But perhaps it is better to explain its origin... the phrase is taken from two verses of "The fifth of May", the most famous poem by Alessandro Manzoni: a judgment on the life of Napoleon Bonaparte that Manzoni sends back to posterity.
