For some time now, the school has been progressively losing its raison d'etre. To train and help the moral, cultural and critical knowledge growth of all the new generations beyond their social belonging.
Every society needs to train and select the ruling classes of its own country. We have delegated universities to this task with higher education courses. They are therefore responsible for forming and selecting the new ruling classes. Without them, democracy itself is at risk.
We need to briefly take a small step back. Until the 1950s, most of the university students belonged to well-to-do social classes. The student movement of 1968, among the many demands, fielded the political 6 in the university, for which this vote, and therefore the promotion, was given to everyone without being judged by the teachers. It was a blaze that over the years ended up in the oblivion of the school. But the idea of deregulating the course of studies by neglecting on the one hand the training of teachers and the quality of education achieved by students on the other, have caused enormous educational damage. Going to reject any quality control of the skills achieved by students (Invalsi Test). If by now it has been established that in our country one fifteen year olds out of two is unable to understand what they are reading, we can say that the omelette is done.
But the situation is even worse at the graduate level. Already in 2008, in a competition to ensure 500 more judges for the judiciary, only half of the posts were filled. The commission took note of an inadequate level of the competitors, all graduates in law, with linguistic poverty, errors in law and even in grammar and even with the inability to complete correctly. According to Luca Poniz, one of the commissioners of the competition, the causes were to be found in the "collapse of the educational attitude of the school" but also in the "proliferation" of universities that tend to promote everyone ". The same happened for the last competition for access to the judiciary held this year. For 310 places, 3,797 candidates competed. Only 220 were admitted to the oral tests, 5.7%. On the other hand, there is the world of health in which, in general, competitions to access the NHS are now rare. Being a doctor, however, is not a job, but a mission. The mission to mitigate the suffering of man and help him to deal with diseases. So much so that in some American universities a paper is asked to be able to enroll in medicine with which the student explains the profound reasons that made him make this choice. For this reason, in the not too distant past, in order to participate in the competition of Primary or Assistant (central figures of the organization of a department) it was necessary to have a national qualification exam. Over time everything has been canceled and replaced by assignments without moments of evaluation by the doctor.
Now the competitions have resumed. But you don't select the most suitable doctor for a specific ward or hospital. It is clear that different skills are needed to be a doctor in a small peripheral hospital or in a highly specialized hospital. Just as one cannot be transferred from a small to a large hospital. In complex societies like ours, skills are essential because knowledge is constantly changing. Innovations in education and healthcare do not wait for our times. There is a risk of remaining on the sidelines of progress and history. The only way out is to put knowledge and merit at the center of our societies.
Antonio Barracca
