A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #45 - Valditara's new national guidelines undermine academic freedom. Max Novicino (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The new National Guidelines for High Schools promoted by Minister 
Giuseppe Valditara are presented as a return to the "centrality of 
culture," to national identity, and to the strengthening of fundamental 
skills. But behind this rhetoric lies a much deeper political agenda: to 
restrict the scope for educational autonomy, centralize control over 
teaching content, and progressively transform schools into places of 
cultural conformity. ---- The crucial point is precisely this: academic 
freedom is not a corporate detail reserved for teachers. It is a 
constitutional principle that protects cultural pluralism and prevents 
the state from imposing an official truth. When a government seeks to 
define educational content, approaches, and objectives in an 
increasingly prescriptive manner, it is not simply "reforming curricula" 
(national guidelines): it is redefining the relationship between school, 
power, and democracy.

Article 33 of the Constitution states that "art and science are free, 
and their teaching is free." This does not mean educational anarchy or 
the absence of common curricula. However, it does mean that teachers 
cannot be reduced to mere enforcers of a cultural line established by 
the ministry in question. The function of public schools is not to 
instill ideological obedience, but to cultivate critical thinking.

The National Guidelines proposed by the Ministry, however, seem to go in 
the opposite direction. They reinforce an identitarian and nationalist 
vision of culture, insist on a celebratory narrative of Western 
tradition, and reduce the space for critical, interdisciplinary, and 
social approaches. Knowledge is presented as something neutral and 
immobile, while every real educational process arises from comparison, 
conflicting interpretations, and historical complexity.

The risk is especially evident in the humanities. History tends to be 
transformed into a narrative of national identity; philosophy into a 
canonical succession devoid of social and political conflict; literature 
into a repertoire of shared values to be transmitted rather than 
critically discussed. In this way, school loses its emancipatory 
function and increasingly approaches a pedagogy of adaptation.

And it is precisely in the selection of authors and cultural references 
that the ideological nature of the operation emerges most clearly. A 
school that exclusively emphasizes "Western civilization," interpreted 
in a celebratory manner, inevitably ends up marginalizing or undermining 
all those intellectual traditions that have criticized power, 
colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, and authoritarianism.

The real risk is a progressive reduction in the space dedicated to 
authors such as Antonio Gramsci, central to understanding the 
relationship between culture and hegemony; Karl Marx, fundamental to 
understanding social transformations and class conflict; Mikhail Bakunin 
and Errico Malatesta, almost always marginalized in syllabi despite 
their role in the history of European political thought.

The same goes for figures like Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose radical 
critique of consumerist conformity and power remains inconvenient; or 
Franco Basaglia and Don Lorenzo Milani, who questioned disciplinary 
institutions and the class-based nature of school.

Even feminist thought risks being relegated to the margins. Authors like 
Simone de Beauvoir, bell hooks, or Silvia Federici rarely find space 
within a traditionalist vision of culture based on the patriarchal and 
national canon.

Similarly, postcolonial studies and non-European literatures risk being 
undermined: Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire in fact call into 
question a Eurocentric and self-celebratory narrative of the West.

Even authors who are now central to the debate on contemporary society, 
such as Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Zygmunt Bauman, risk being 
treated marginally precisely because they help us understand the 
mechanisms of power, the reproduction of inequalities, and the 
transformations of contemporary capitalism.

Of course, no school curriculum can encompass everything. Every 
educational choice involves selection. But here the problem isn't 
quantitative: it's political. When authors who serve an 
identity-building narrative are privileged and those who foster critical 
and confrontational thinking are underserved, school ceases to be a 
place of pluralism and becomes a tool for cultural direction.

The attack on academic freedom, therefore, does not occur solely through 
official content, but through the construction of a cultural climate in 
which some perspectives are considered legitimate and others implicitly 
delegitimized or rendered invisible.

But ideological control is also accompanied by the growing 
bureaucratization of teaching. In recent years, frameworks, standards, 
platforms, monitoring, skills certification, and rigidly defined 
curricula have proliferated. Teachers are progressively transformed into 
compilers of procedures, while the scope for independent planning and 
pedagogical research is shrinking.

Within this framework, the new Guidelines risk representing a further 
leap in quality: a school increasingly focused on culturally "correct" 
content according to the government and simultaneously increasingly 
subordinated to the demands of the market and administrative governance.

There is also a precedent that should give pause: the new guidelines for 
civic education introduced in recent years. They too spoke of 
"strengthening common values" and "restoring the centrality of civic 
education." The result, however, has been largely disappointing. Civic 
education has often been transformed into a moralistic and rhetorical 
subject, dominated by abstract concepts of legality, homeland, respect 
for institutions, and proper behavior, rather than becoming a genuine 
space for critical analysis of social, economic, and political 
relations. Fundamental issues such as social conflict, inequality, 
colonialism, the role of labor, feminist, and environmental movements, 
and the mechanisms of economic and media power have frequently been 
marginalized or addressed superficially. In many cases, civic education 
has been used ideologically as a tool for cultural discipline rather 
than critical emancipation. It is difficult not to see the new 
Guidelines for High Schools as a continuation of that same approach.

On the one hand, there are calls for a return to cultural order; on the 
other, there is a push toward corporatization, competition, and the 
adaptation of schools to production demands. In both cases, however, the 
result is the same: reducing the critical autonomy of public schools, 
muzzling teachers, and repressing student dissent.

For this reason, the answer cannot be limited to a nostalgic defense of 
old curricula. The issue is political and democratic. Defending academic 
freedom means defending the very possibility of a school capable of 
fostering critical thinking, dissent, and intellectual autonomy.

A democratic society doesn't need teachers trained in cultural 
obedience. It needs teachers free to question the present, question 
history, challenge dominant narratives, and build knowledge together 
with students.

When political power attempts to transform schools into a tool for 
ideological direction, it's not just teachers' freedom that's 
undermined. It's the democratic quality of society as a whole.

http://www.alternativalibertaria.org
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en