HISTORY - OUTLINES AND SKILLS

HISTORY - OUTLINES AND SKILLS

At the end of the high school course, the student is familiar with the main events and long-term transformations in the history of Europe and Italy, from antiquity to the present day, within the framework of the global history of the world; uses appropriately the vocabulary and interpretative categories proper to the discipline; knows how to read and evaluate different sources; looks at history as a significant dimension for understanding, through critical discussion and comparison among a variety of perspectives and interpretations, the roots of the present.

The starting point will be to emphasize the temporal dimension of each event and the ability to place it in the proper chronological succession, since teaching history is to propose the unfolding of interrelated events according to time. On the other hand, the second dimension of history, namely space, should not be neglected. Indeed, history involves a geographical dimension; and human geography, in turn, needs temporal coordinates. The two space-time dimensions must be an integral part of learning the discipline.

Making use of the basic vocabulary of the discipline, the student will rework and expound on the topics covered in an articulate way that is attentive to their relationships, grasp the elements of affinity-continuity and diversity-discontinuity between different civilizations, and orient himself or herself on the general concepts relating to state institutions, political and legal systems, types of society, and artistic and cultural production. In this regard, an adequate space should be reserved for the theme of citizenship and the Republican Constitution, so that, at the end of the five-year high school period, the student is well acquainted with the fundamentals of our constitutional order, as value explications of the historically relevant experiences of our people, also in relation and comparison with other fundamental documents (just to mention a few examples, from the Magna Charta Libertatum to the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), also maturing, also in relation to the activities carried out by educational institutions, the necessary skills for an active and responsible civic life.
It is useful and desirable to turn attention to civilizations other than the Western one throughout the course, devoting appropriate space, to give a few examples, to Indian civilization at the time of Alexander the Great's conquests; to Chinese civilization at the time of the Roman Empire; to pre-Columbian American cultures; to non-European countries conquered by European colonialism between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to arrive at a knowledge of the overall framework of relations between different civilizations in the twentieth century. Special attention will be devoted to the in-depth study of particular thematic cores peculiar to the different high school paths.
While not detracting from the overall frame of reference, adequate space may be reserved for activities that lead to evaluating different types of sources, reading historical documents or comparing different interpretative theses: this is in order to understand the ways in which scholars construct the narrative of history, the variety of sources used, the succession and contrast of different interpretations. The student will also accrue a method of study that conforms to the subject under investigation, enabling him or her to synthesize and schematize an expository text of a historical nature, grasping the salient nodes of interpretation, exposition and the specific meanings of disciplinary vocabulary. Attention, likewise, should be devoted to the frequent verification of oral exposition, of which in particular it will be desirable to supervise accuracy in placing events according to the correct spatial-temporal coordinates, coherence of discourse and mastery of terminology.

SPECIFIC LEARNING OBJECTIVES

SECOND TWO-YEAR PERIOD

The third and fourth years will be devoted to the study of the process of the formation of Europe and its opening to a global dimension between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age, in the chronological span from the 11th century to the threshold of the 20th century. In the construction of the educational paths, the following thematic cores cannot be left out: the different aspects of the revival of the 11th century; universal powers (Papacy and Empire), communes and monarchies; the Church and religious movements; society and economy in late medieval Europe; the crisis of universal powers and the advent of territorial monarchies and lordships; geographical discoveries and their consequences; the final crisis of the religious unity of Europe; the construction of modern states and absolutism; the development of the economy up to the industrial revolution; the political revolutions of the seventeenth-eighteenth century (English, American, French); the Napoleonic age and the Restoration; the problem of nationality in the nineteenth century, the Italian Risorgimento and united Italy; the West of nation-states; the social question and the workers' movement; the second industrial revolution; imperialism and nationalism; the development of the Italian state up to the end of the nineteenth century.

It is appropriate that some crucial themes (e.g., society and culture of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, The birth of scientific culture in the seventeenth century, the Enlightenment, Romanticism) be treated in an interdisciplinary way, in relation to the other teachings.

FIFTH YEAR.
The final year is devoted to the study of contemporary times, from the analysis of the premises of World War I to the present day. From a methodological point of view, without prejudice to the desirability that the student should also know and be able to critically discuss the main contemporary events, it is, however, necessary that this be done with a clear awareness of the difference that exists between history and chronicle, between events on which there is an established historiography and others on which, on the other hand, the historiographical debate is still open.
The following thematic nuclei cannot be left out in the construction of teaching paths: the beginning of mass society in the West; the Giolittian age; World War I; the Russian Revolution and the USSR from Lenin to Stalin; the postwar crisis; fascism; the crisis of '29 and its consequences in the United States and the world; Nazism; the Shoah and other genocides of the 20th century; World War II; Italy from Fascism to the Resistance and the stages in the construction of republican democracy.
The historical framework of the second twentieth century is to be built around three basic lines: 1) from the "Cold War" to the turning points of the late twentieth century: the UN, the German question, the two blocs, the age of Khrushchev and Kennedy, the collapse of the Soviet system, the process of formation of the European Union, the processes of globalization, the computer revolution and the new conflicts of the global world; 2) decolonization and the struggle for development in Asia, Africa and Latin America: the birth of the state of Israel and the Palestinian question, the non-aligned movement, and the resurgence of China and India as world powers; 3) the history of Italy after World War II: reconstruction, the economic boom, the reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, terrorism, Tangentopoli, and the crisis of the political system in the early 1990s.
Some issues of the contemporary world will have to be examined taking into account their "geographical" nature (e.g., the distribution of natural and energy resources, migration dynamics, demographic characteristics of different areas of the planet, the relationship between climate and economy). Particular care will be taken to deal in an interdisciplinary manner, in relation to the other teachings, with themes crucial to European culture (by way of example: the experience of war, society and culture in the age of totalitarianism, the relationship between intellectuals and political power).