Frontiers
The first frontier is that of the object: the history to be taught has broadened its horizon of meaning, which today is world-wide The cultural horizon that needs to be built is a world-wide horizon. A fundamental prerequisite, therefore, is to know how to orient oneself in this new space.
The result is an operation of adapting knowledge to an integrated level to avoid the risk of a narrative that is simply a collection of historical facts. History as a discipline constitutes a statute of regulation of knowledge, that is, a set of rules and operations to be carried out for the specificity of historical formation: putting it into perspective, contextualization, the fundamental lexicons, and grammars of historical knowledge, the construction of great codes of meaning. Then, within this disciplinary framework, one can concentrate on different eras, but the essential task of the history teacher is to provide that approach to knowledge mentioned above.
The network is now proposed as the new metaphor of reality (in-depth analysis).
Many metaphors in the past have already accompanied man in the interpretation of reality. For example: roots, origins, peoples. Metaphors, however, tend to be essentialized in the common language, so the risk is that metaphors become reality. However, when the network is proposed as a metaphor, terms such as democracy in the network and exchange in the network must be understood as metaphorical terms. Networked democracy is not a real, political democracy; the networked exchange is not social exchange; what happens in a network can only be applied metaphorically to concrete relationships between people.
A critical element in this sense tells us that the public discourse that is becoming dominant is making wide reference to this metaphorical space. The Web is the space that becomes a place where we review some things about civil education.
Within the web, a real cultural and social environment, there is, in fact, the frontier of civil education, understood as the acquisition of responsibility for what is put into circulation. The web cannot be understood as a space at the mercy of the free will of anyone.
These new technological tools do not only bring into play a cognitive level but rather a social level; they bring into play elements typical of the constitution of society. For example, the problem of identity: on the Web you can do whatever you want and no one will know who you are. This feeds a sense of power. The elements of civilization therefore vary. In the web new ways of conceiving identities are born, belonging (communities), social memories (the web does not forget; the web remembers everything) that must be learned to investigate and know. This situation determines the need for a reflection on citizenship education within the social places built by the web and it is in this perspective that the role of the Historical Institutes of the Resistance becomes central.
In fact, there is something that directly involves us and concerns us as Institutes. Let's put it into perspective, as historians do. Italy is a special place: every time a new medium reaches the peak of communicative success, it discovers and experiences its irresistible political potential, often before the others. Think of the radio and cinema of the 1920s, what we have done; think of the power of TV in the 1980s and 1990s and its importance in the political sphere. And today, what we are combining with the use of the Web. Every new communicative tool has deployed its extraordinary political power in Italy; but, between one demonstration and another of power, the Historical Institutes of the Resistance were born with a precise purpose.