The teachers talk a lot about the crisis during the course of the programs.
The more attentive ones have been talking about it since the beginning, since the beginning of the process of homination, marked by crises (climatic or variously environmental) that impressed on the human species decisive changes. They still know the crisis of the thirteenth century BC, the one that broke down the magnificent cultural and political structures of the Bronze Age, and gave rise to the millennium of Persia, Greece and Rome. The crisis of the Roman Empire and that of the 14th century, with the black plague, marked the beginning and the end of any medieval history program.
The modern age knows the crisis of the seventeenth century, while the Italian school continues to be harmful, the condemnation of Croce on the century of Baroque, which according to him marked the economic, political and cultural defeat of the peninsula. And, finally, entered the contemporary age is all a succession of crises, from those that accompanied the revolts of '48, up to the four canonical crises of the twentieth century and our days: 1880, 1929, 1973, 2008.
Therefore, this is not a new theme, the one to which this dossier is dedicated. But it is new in two respects.
The first is the conceptual and factual revision, which becomes obligatory especially when the subjects of study become habitual and obvious. It is precisely these situations, in fact, that is at the origin of the diffusion of those "educated stereotypes", which are found in the most unsuspected folds of the taught history. In the dossier, you will find a wide choice. All the manuals speak of the crisis of 1880. But can we consider it as such? Or is it not the case to distinguish between local situations, which went into crisis (as in the case of Italian agricultural production) and a world economy, which instead experienced an impetuous acceleration? All the manuals praise Keynesian politics as an "intelligent" tool to get out of the crisis. Really sure? Or was it, instead, a sort of hot diaper, where the exit from the crisis (terrible, but you have to have the courage to say it) was promoted by full employment, caused by the world war? And then: is it really true that the crisis of 1973 was determined by overproduction? Or was it not a systemic crisis (of values, customs, social organization, cultural production and redefinition of production systems)? And to end with the crisis that we are still experiencing: has it ended or continues? How to define the period we are living in?
In conclusion: is the crisis the same for everyone, or should we distinguish between states, and within them between social groups?
The dossier allows the teacher to clarify these doubts, to verify the correctness of the manual information (often linked to visions that only twenty years ago were accepted, but that recent historiography has overturned). But it also allows a second operation, I think more interesting and positive.
The "crisis", in fact, like all topics that belong to specialized historiographic strands (in this case the economic one) is an argument inserted in the curricular history, like a sort of foreign body. There are politics and society that follow their development, then at a certain point, we have to deal with the "crises", which come when you least expect them or following certain almost unavoidable biological cycles.
The work we have done, with the help of Marcello Flores, Scipione Guarracino, Carlo Fumian and Giovanni Gozzini, allows us to offer teachers a global view of the twentieth century, capable of marking some essential focuses. Periodic moments, around which to bring together facts, problems and characters.
In short, a sort of scheme for programming, in four phases: the first, from 1880 to 1929, during which the great network of globalization was formed, which the States sought in every way to understand and govern; the second, from 1929 to 1943, characterized by the most frightening crisis of the century and by the attempts of the various States to respond; the third, by now passed to the manuals with a famous name, the "thirty golden years", is the period of maximum growth of human societies, characterized, moreover, by effective instruments of control of the international economy, in the meantime grown exponentially; these instruments began to fail in the 1970s, when progressive deregulation began, and consequently an age of development on the one hand, and of financial "bubbles" that burst repeatedly on the other; until the most recent crisis, that of 2008, well comparable to that of 1929. And we are in the fourth phase, closed in 2008, which opens the period in which we live.
to be continued in the next part https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/5d878dc58d5b5f00ad32ca96/crises-and-didactics-part-2-5d8f9fed32335400b4b35833