12 maggio 2023
The Legal Representative as well as founder of the S. Freud peer school, Dr. Daniele Nappo, emphasizes the need to change the way history is taught. Nowadays, history is not stimulating and above all it does not give students the necessary tools to make connections between what is studied in school and what is happening in the world around them.
History is an important subject in every major, but it is often not given the proper consideration and above all teachers do not propose alternative methods to the, not at all exciting, chronological narration of events. Most teachers present the subject as a linear and orderly sequence of events, but history is not just dates and events, it is conceptual and thematic. An international approach would be useful and has "mental" slant, so that events are understood not only in a temporal way. The conceptual method makes it easier to find and use sources, with the study of descriptions of the period. The deductive method allows for a greater in-depth study of a topic and a system that allows one to approach the discipline with evocative and non-abstract creativity. History can be taught by knowledge or skills, undoubtedly learning only facts is limiting.In Italian schools today, the history teacher carries out a ministerial program and in most cases students have a boring and superficial knowledge. The problem of young people is not that they do not know who Garibaldi or Mazzini was, but that when faced with a background article of a political or economic or historical nature they disappear conceptual bases, mental models and critical skills to understand and evaluate it. Argumentative maps are useful for supporting and developing all those necessary cognitive functions and skills. Maps give order to our thoughts, representing them visually by giving them shape, appearance, material and spatial configuration. In this day and age we have software available that makes it easy and efficient to make them. If schools want to form self-sufficient, critically minded individuals, they must be able to equip students with a skill set that enables this.
