Report on Antonio Brusa's speech "At the time of the internet: how to study materials and the history to study change".
We are in the midst of a digital revolution and we must ask ourselves how the study materials and the history to be studied change. I will deal with the subject of professionalism and the content that new technologies call into question. It's not just a question of buying tablets for all kids or becoming more or less good with the digital revolution; there's something much more important to think about and discuss. Something that justifies this seminar being organized by the Historical Institutes of the Resistance, not as any teacher training seminar, which the Institutes have been doing for some time, but as something closely related to the mission of the Historical Institutes.
The confusion is of all those who are faced with surfing the Internet, especially when you want to understand something about a given topic. Observe, for example, the feudal pyramid: sovereign, vassals, valvassals. This image, which appears in all the history manuals for middle and high schools, is used by a historian, Giuseppe Sergi, in an article in Repubblica, to explain that it is actually an invention because the feudal pyramid never existed. Beyond Sergi's article, the interesting thing is that, if you click "feudalism" on Google, the first image that appears is this. So Google immediately associates a "feudal" pyramid with the concept of the feudal hierarchy. Since the writing and the image travel together in the net, which of the two forms of expression prevails? Between images and correct historical knowledge, who has the best?
Let's move on to contemporary history and assume a case study: the foibe. I did research with my guys, on February 10, the Day of Remembrance dedicated to the drama of the foibe. Did we ask ourselves: how many pages appear on the Internet? As of February 10, there are 1,270,000 pages, a changing universe in which "reliable" products are dispersed. On this subject Luigi Cajani published research, at the time of the scandal of the "left" manuals, in 1993-1994, starting from the denunciation by a booklet of An that attacked the history manuals, in use in Italian schools, defined as left because they did not speak of the foibe. Luigi Cajani has examined a large number of manuals, including the highly criticized Camera-Fabietti, concluding that it is not true that the Italian manuals have censored this topic (for example, the Camera-Fabietti dedicates five cards to foibe; what is not mentioned is what the Italians did in Yugoslavia "before").
So how can we move within the Google universe, a universe that is constantly changing? To cite another example, immediately after February 10, because of the pressure of March 8, from the Web sites disappears Raul Pupo, a historical expert on foibe. How does a guy understand where and what to look for?
Let's examine the task of Valeria, media III, who reports some considerations about foibe:
opening any dictionary the term "foiba" is indicated as "rocky chasm, shaped like an inverted funnel, created by the erosion of bodies of water, which can reach even 200 m deep".
The real shame is that for 60 years no one has dared to speak; in a democratic country this is very serious and the fact that even today this phenomenon is not reported on most school books makes it even more scandalous.
The girl has the manual in the classroom, she can access the text and she could check it; but what she is referring to is what circulates on the net, that is, the meta-fact: there is no talk of foibe.
Let's look at a 2010 student sharing site and a principal's opinion. The result is the same: the opinion of the network prevails, the belief that we are not talking about foibe. The headmaster even says: "if the tragedy of the Jews, the Shoah, has entered into common sense, the foibe still does not.
So, what can be done to know what the foibas were?
to be continued in the next part