This article will have the Italian translation below because it’s a very Italian subject and probably people from other countries will have a harder time understanding the concept.
So, in Italy we have a type of high school in which you study, in addition to other subjects, Latin and ancient Greek, it’s the school considered the most difficult of all and in theory it’s the one that should prepare you best for university. In the past, it was considered the school to prepare the future ruling classes, given its profoundly humanistic and elitist focus.
This is also the kind of school I attended. And so many times I thought to myself, but what possessed me to do that? Even years later ( it’s been almost 10 years now since I graduated) I often think back to how this school had such a big impact on my life. And no, this is not a positive impact.
The classical high school (liceo classico) is surrounded by a host of admirers and supporters who defend it to the hilt and by an elitist aura of a difficult school, but which then opens all kinds of doors for you. But what doors, I wonder, other than those of the psychiatrist? The phrase I have heard most often when talking about classical high school is that classical high school “gives you the basics.” “Yes, it’s difficult, but it gives you the basics, you know, after that you can deal with anything. You can see the difference with other people who went to other schools in college, they have no method of study. Not to mention foreigners, how shallow and ignorant are those who haven’t spent their afternoons doing translations of Tacitus?”
To tell you the whole truth I have more and more the conviction that all these clichés, are nothing but fairy tales that we who attended classical school tell ourselves so that we don’t have to admit that we spent five years of our adolescence busting our butts on largely useless things, studying subjects that were not up to date and, above all, studying them in an antiquated way. Three years studying Dante! For goodness sake, our Dante created the Italian language and deserves to be studied, I don’t argue with that, but three years just on the Divine Comedy in high school? He would deserve this attention in a university course, but in high school it would also be nice to study some slightly more modern authors, yet the 20th century is largely neglected because there is no time.
The main problem with the classical curriculum, in my opinion, is not even so much the subjects studied, but their distribution. It’s fine to do a little Greek and Roman history, but what’s the point of knowing how much ear hair Scipio Africanus had if the Cold War is a black hole and now we’re struggling to understand what’s going on in the world? I’m not the kind of person who says that humanistic culture serves nothing and that you have to just create automaton-workers because I don’t think that at all, but at the end of the day, high school is only five years long and you have to make a selection of the really important things in order to give a human and cultural base. Really spending all my girlish afternoons doing a Latin version on the sedulae ancillae and a Greek version on the Spartan strategists was the best way to become a complete person ready to face difficulties? Was Iacopone Da Todi really essential reading for my education?
Certainly learning Latin and Greek gave me something (just as I’m sure learning the ancient language of the Incas would have given me something, in the end, everything, really everything, leaves us something), they helped me learn other foreign languages, and above all I find ancient literature to be very rich in insights and still very relevant (unlike medieval literature), but honestly I think it would have been enough to study them for fewer hours per week, to recognize their cultural importance, but without putting them so much at the center. Then, if you really want to learn Greek aorist and to read in hexameter, you can always do it at the university. It’s the university, in fact, in my opinion, the appropriate place to deepen knowledge. Higher education, first and foremost, must help people build their identity, to face the world with curiosity and courage, and for this it must provide a varied, critical, deep preparation, but still with a background of pragmatism. Why do we then complain that at age 18, kids don’t know what they want and are lost? But isn’t the cause also a bit of having spent the last five years in dusty place full of mostly frustrated and pedagogically ignorant teachers?
As for my personal experience in classical high school, the worst thing of all was not even the content studied, which in the end also had its reason, but the way it was taught. My class was certainly a bit over the top compared to the average, but what I remember years later was the very bad climate of competition, I remember people at 17 crying over a B in math instead of an A, people at 18 completely psychologically exhausted, teachers competing to see who was the biggest asshole and who had the largest entourage of bootlickers. When, after always getting by, at 17 I had a drop in my performance due to psychological distress and personal problems (which during adolescence is completely normal) no teacher asked me how I was doing or tried to help me. And that was their job, not simply to teach me their subject. I eventually made it, but I came to graduation exhausted, in reserve of energy, and I had to spend the first years of my adult life trying to heal my psychological wounds accumulated during adolescence, instead of really enjoying the present. When I think of all my acquaintances (I didn’t do a statistical study, I just observed), I believe that those who went through an extremely heavy and difficult schooling in high school come into adulthood with a big weight on their shoulders, instead of an extra gear. Many of my high school friends, once they finished school, lived with the handbrake on, struggling. They are probably not the only ones, and certainly not just because of school. But deep inside I think that realizing that they had been slaving away for five years on things of little practical use played its part in that.
When choosing high school in Italy, we are still very young, at 13 it’s difficult to make thoughtful choices. For instance, I wanted to go to the linguistic high school, since I was very fond of languages, but then in front of my mother’s grimace of disdain (“you learn languages in no time, you might as well study them later”) and the fact that my best friend was going to the classical and that I was the best in my class, it seemed the obvious choice. After only a year, however, I wanted to change because I realized that I had put myself in a snake pit and that what I didn’t really enjoy what I was studying. My mother, however, was not very supportive and so in the end, with difficulty, I went ahead. As much as I believe there is no use in crying over spilled milk, I cannot deny that I regretted making this choice many times and that, indeed, I believe it deeply influenced and burdened my later years. So many times I have wondered how things would have turned out if I had gone to a lighter school. But this, of course, is a question destined to remain unanswered.
I think it still goes the most the idea that it is difficulties that bring out a person’s strength and that suffering is a great teacher. I don’t argue. From pain we learn a lot, but we don’t always learn positive things, often the greatest lesson that remains is fear. And certainly difficulty brings out strength, but not always. First of all, it depends on everyone’s character, there are people who in the face of failure bring out the best side of themselves (honestly, I think these are a tiny part of society), others, on the other hand, always receiving only the stick and never the carrot, mostly break down and convince themselves that they are not worth enough. Moreover, one thing is struggling for something we believe is worth it, and another is exhausting ourselves for nothing. In my opinion, everything important in life requires effort and pain, and it’s crucial to learn to work hard, but we have to do it for what really matters to us, not just to earn the approval of parents and teachers.
Then it’s crucial to realize that times have changed. If fifty years ago the classical high school really opened doors for you, now without college, master’s degree, work experience, and especially without strong motivation, it doesn’t really give you anything. Now it seems that in order to deserve to be paid to work one must at the very least be a Nobel Prize candidate (in Italy at least).
I don’t have any great answers or easy solutions, but I’m convinced that the classical high school, and the Italian school in general, should freshen up. If I had younger children or siblings I would definitely advise them against this school and tell them to prioritize building their person instead of academic achievement. Then there is always time to study, instead finding one’s integrity is something that the sooner one does, the better one lives.
