Column

1. History in Italian schools

1) The Italian tradition of historicism
Italian historicism - both of idealistic orientation, as in B. Croce (1866-1952) and G. Gentile, (1875-1944), and in the post-war period also Marxist, due to the influence exerted by A. Gramsci's (1891-1937) thought - states that historicity represents the fundamental character of every aspect of reality, since every human theoretical and practical activity takes place in history and must be understood historically.

From this philosophical vision originates a lasting general approach to teaching in Italy, also due to the role that both Croce and Gentile had in the early 1920s in promoting a school reform, called the "Gentile reform" (1923), which still after a century marks the Italian school, first of all the historical framework of all literary, philosophical and artistic teachings. Actually, in our high school, particularly in the final three-year period (16-18 years), the following are presented historically.
- Italian literature (from its origins to the twentieth century)
- Philosophy (from Greek philosophy to today, excluding oriental thought)
- The history of art (from Egyptian art and archaic Greece to contemporary currents)
- Foreign literature
- Classical literature
- Greek and Latin literature

2) The historical approach as a characteristic of the Italian school
The historical characterization concerns not only the chronological order of the exposition, but also the contextualization of the main philosophical, literary and artistic movements, each in its own historical time. Parts of the school textbooks of the various subjects are also dedicated to the historical contextualization. Therefore, all the humanities subjects cooperate in the historical education of students, not only history. This peculiar characteristic differentiates the Italian school from the Anglo-Saxon world and - to refer to a context closer to ours - for instance from France.

3) School history programs and the study of the Twentieth Century
In the five years of high school, programs of specific history discipline develop from prehistory to ancient times (including the study of the civilizations of the Near East) to the contemporary age. For some years, after the Second World War, the part on fascism was removed from the history textbooks, by the Allied Administration: therefore, history was taught only up until the First World War and this continued to be the case for a long time.

An important turning point regarding history programs and consequently textbooks occurred at the end of the Nineties, when it was decided (with the Berlinguer reform, named after the then Minister of Education) that the entire last year of high school, in view of the final exam, would be dedicated to the study of the twentieth century, which was then coming to an end. This picture is substantially confirmed by the National Guidelines for History currently in force, dating back 15 years.

However, many teachers do not cover the eighty years from 1945 to today, except for the initial period, just after the Second World War. That’s a problem, because in this way contemporary history is ignored by students and future citizens. The problem also occurs for particular histories, such as those of philosophy and literature. In this case too, the last decades are often ignored, because the study of past authors absorbs all the available time.

2. History in Italian textbooks

1) History textbooks from the Second World War to today: Contents
In the post-war manuals (1950s-1970s), history was presented as follows.
- There was a general, essentially political, and diachronic history, with synchronic additions of social and economic history (for example: the Industrial Revolution of the 18th-19th centuries) and cultural history (Renaissance, Enlightenment).
- The perspective was essentially Eurocentric (and Western-centric), with ample space for Italian history. Other continents were considered only in relation to the West (for example: European expansion and colonialism). Exception: ancient history began with the treatment of Eastern civilizations (limited to the Near East).

Subsequently (from the 1970s to the 1990s), enrichments were introduced to the textbook treatment, regarding, for example:
- The revival of motifs specific to the French historiography of the Annales, with the valorization of geography and the spatial dimension in the examination of historical events, following the model, for example, of Civilizations and Empires of the Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II by F. Braudel (1902-1985); and with the thematization of the different "duration" of different historical phenomena (political, economic, cultural, of mentality).
- The contribution of the human sciences, with the contribution, for example, of quantitative history.
- Work on sources, as a key aspect of historical education.

Lately (21st century), textbooks have opened up to new fields of research: local and global history; environmental history; gender history, cultural studies.

2) History textbooks from the Second World War to today: Textual form
The changes described above have been accompanied by an evolution of the textual form of the textbooks, which can be summarized as follows: we have gone from a narration that included all, to the insertion of in-depth pages alongside the narration and, finally, to a structure of the manuals that we could call hypertextual, where:
- The narrative exposition remains substantially the same, even if it gradually presents a greater internal articulation compared to the purely political-state line of the beginning.
- The narrative exposition is linked to historical maps, lateral texts regarding suggestions derived from new areas of research (spaces, global history, women studies, environmental issues).
- An increasing space is dedicated to historical sources and pages of historiography, to citizenship education (often also addressed in dedicated parts of the book) and the present/past relationship.
- The parts dedicated to didactic work are increasing (exercises, activities for strengthening skills, etc.)

In conclusion: today's manuals present a great richness of content, but also a notable complexity. In recent times a new linearity has been sought both in writing, with the simplification of language and syntax, and in the structure, with the narrative exposition that tries to reabsorb at least some parts of the variegated mass of collateral information. Many materials are not available in the paper book but online. (the online offering of materials related to manuals is increasingly broad and diversified)

3) The School publishing industry
From the post-war period to today, the textbooks writers have changed. At first it was a matter of university specialists (even if they often delegated the actual writing to their collaborators); later - from the Nineties - the tendency prevailed for the textbooks to be written by people with school experience, like teachers or groups of teachers, while the coordination and planning role of the publishing houses grew. Lately there has been a tendency to entrust the writing of textbooks to well-known people, who conduct for instance television programs and/or blogs.

While in many countries (see France and the United States) the choice of the textbook is entrusted to local institutions (regions, individual states) in Italy the decision is made by individual teachers (only recently has there been a tendency to have the choice of a single textbook, chosen collegially by history teachers, for all courses in a school). In any case, it is the teacher who decide and every year in spring the publishing houses present their textbooks to schools for adoption, in competition with each other.

School publishing in Italy represents a more significant share of the publishing market than in other countries: on the one side this depends on the generally good quality of the production aimed at schools; on the other side, it is a sign on the overall fragility of Italian publishing industry (at least compared with others).

3. History textbooks and Korea

1) The current situation and the expected ministerial indications for history
Given the characteristics of Italian history textbooks, references to Korea are generally very limited: Korea “enters the scene” at the beginning of twentieth century at the time of the country's annexation by Japan. The only moment in Korean history addressed at a normal pace concerns the Korean War of the early 1950s, the treatment of which is also accompanied by geographical maps, with military movement directions, until the stabilization of the border, on the 38th parallel. Other references to Korea can be found in the history of the last quarter of the 20th century, in the context of the treatment of new international economics and the growth of the so-called “Asian tigers”.

It is hard to foresee a great expansion of the history of Korea and generally of the global horizon, because of the ministerial indications for history in the first cycle (but the indications for the second cycle - high school - are still awaited). They suggest an enhancement of the history of Italy and the West, and promote the construction of a national and "Western" identity in students, according to the direction impressed by E. Galli della Loggia, author in 2023 of an essay significantly entitled Insegnare l'Italia. Una proposta per la scuola dell'obbligo, Morcelliana, co-authored by Loredana Perla, the coordinator of the commission that deals with history programs.

2) Possible interventions
However, the national indications have a regulatory nature and are not strictly binding. Teachers maintain so far a wide freedom, as we have seen with regard to contemporary history, which, although it is in the programs and manuals, is often neglected. It is therefore possible to imagine small interventions, both in history schoolbooks and in teaching, that involve moments of history and aspects of civilization and current life in Korea, compared with those of European countries and expecially of Italy.

To this end, the parts dedicated to the analysis of spaces and maps are particularly suitable; and also the past/present sections, the ones dedicated to citizenship education, the pages for the development of skills (offering photos, images, suggestions for reflections to be developed by the students). Below are some examples.

a) World Maps. The “shape of the world” in European and Korean cartography, at the beginning of the modern age
The study of European expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - particularly in the Indo-Pacific area - can be integrated with the world maps that were drawn at the time based on the experience of navigators, missionaries, etc. A useful development could be to present - alongside the Italian and European maps - also those drawn up by Korean cartographers.

① Among those drawn up in Europe
- The map of the Chinese coast and the Japanese archipelago, dating back to 1560, in the Hall of Maps of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. In the map, the work of Egnazio Danti, Korea appears as a peninsula, but in very small dimensions and out of proportion to the context. The Hall of Maps commissioned by Cosimo I de' Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, was designed and built by Giorgio Vasari between 1561 and 1565.
https://mostre2.museogalileo.it/palazzovecchio-guardaroba/index.php/it/esplorazione-interattiva/indice-delle-mappe

- The map of Asia by Abraham Ortelius (1527-98), a cartographer from Antwerp, dating back to 1579. Also in this case, Korea is represented in reduced dimensions, as a small peninsula.
https://www.vintage-maps.com/en/antique-maps/asia/asian-continent/ortelius-asian-continent-1579::12563

- The map - by Henricus Hondius (1563-1612) - was published in Amsterdam in 1623, and shows Korea with an elongated shape, like an island, very close to the continent in the northern part. In fact, as it is explained in an overprint, at the time it was not known whether it was an island or a peninsula. This probably depends on the fact that the navigators had only sailed up a certain stretch of the rivers that mark the northern border of Korea, convincing themselves that it was an island. The two rivers flow from Mt. Paektu, in opposite direction, one towards the Yellow Sea, the other towards the Pacific Ocean, more precisely towards the East Sea (what for the Japanese is the Sea of Japan, as it is indicated on many maps).
https://www.vintage-maps.com/en/search?controller=search&orderby=product_custom_2&orderway=asc&search-cat-select=0&search_query=East+Asia+Korea&submit_search=

② The Korean map
The so-called kangnido map is the oldest Korean map of the world. The lost original dates back to the early period of the Korean history called Joseon (1392-1910). Two copies are preserved: one from 1470, the other from the second half of the 16th century (1560). The description of the world seems to be based on the knowledge of the West transmitted to the Far East, following the Mongol expansion in Asia. The map is centered on China, with Korea on the right, represented in detail, larger than the islands of the Japanese archipelago, on the far right of the 1560 map. On the left, towards the West, the lower point corresponds to India, with the island of Ceylon; then the Indian Ocean is described, with a very small Africa; to the north, we see a sketch of Europe, actually quite detailed.
https://blog.richmond.edu/livesofmaps/2023/10/06/map-of-the-week-kangnido/

b) Italy and Korea in the era of the construction of national states in Europe and of the Asian “gunpowder” empires (16th and 17th centuries)
The custom of contrasting the political fragmentation of Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries with the contemporary European context, which sees the construction and consolidation of modern absolute national monarchies dates back to N. Machiavelli (1469-1527). It would be appropriate - but it is rarely done - to accompany the study of these processes, typical of the Early modern age, with an essential comparison with what is happening outside of Europe. While in the European continent - in a political space "full" of subjects - none of the contenders has the strength to achieve the unification of Europe or in any case to found a large-scale political formation (the European empires are overseas empires), in Asia we witness instead the construction or consolidation of large empires, aided by the use of firearms, the so called “gunpower empires”: the Ottoman Turkish empire, the Safavid empire in the Iranian area, the Mughal empire in the Indian subcontinent, the Chinese empire of the Ming dinasty and later of the Qing, while also the Japanese archipelago comes to be unified. (We have a chapter on this subject in Spazio Pubblico, Bruno Mondadori, Pearson, Milano 2018).

A more in-depth study could concern the events of that period in Korea. Here at the time there was a dynasty ruling the entire peninsula, which had to deal with particularistic and localistic tendencies, and was not immune to the hegemonic attempts of powerful neighbors and military interventions, like the Italian territory, devastated in the 16th century by the wars that France, Spain and the Habsburg Empire conducted to impose their hegemony on our country. This work could possibly include the following insights:
- The structures of the Neo-Confucian centralized monarchy in the Joseon Period and the absolute monarchies in Early modern Europe.
- Oars, sails and cannons in the 16th and 17th centuries. Functional structural comparison between galleys, Venetian galleasses used at Lepanto (1571), galleons and Korean armored kobukson (turtle ships), used by Admiral Yi Sunsin (1545-1598) against the Japanese fleet (1592-1598). Two maps of the naval battles of Yi Sunsin are available in Michael D. Shin (ed.), Korean History in maps, from prehistory to the Twenty-first Century, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2022.

c) Italy and South Korea: two models of modernization compared (1955-2025)
Both countries embarked on rapid growth in the post-war period, starting from deteriorated social and economic situations, due to the Second World War and, for Korea, also the war of the early 1950s. The idea is to accompany the study of the Italian boom, and in general of the performance of the Italian economy in the period 1955-2025, with the analysis of some corresponding data from Korean economic history. The comparison with South Korea would be justified by the not too dissimilar dimensions of the population and the overall and per capita income of the two countries in the last years (less significant would seem the comparison with countries incomparable in size, population, etc.).

The choice of Korea as a reference country would also be justified because it would allow us to highlight analogies (among others: the delay in the modernization processes in the early Twentieth Century; the transition, in the post-war period, from a largely agricultural economy to an industrial and then tertiary one; the wide availability of labor; the growth based on exports; the compression of wage levels and the limited domestic market; the great importance of the automotive industry in both countries) but also the differences (the different times in which the industrial take-off occurred; the different political and institutional framework; the different investment in education in the two countries; the different relative weight of large concentrations and small and medium-sized industry; the significant differences that have arisen over time between the leading sectors of the two economies, with particular regard to the electronics sector; the different rate of innovation).

Even in an Italo-centric and Eurocentric logic, the comparison with South Korea would allow us to better understand the modernization of our country: timing, dynamics, characteristics (and last but not least the open problems). This could possibly include the following insights:
- Our Computers. Olivetti and Samsung. The Italian and Korean Electronic Industry.
- Our Cars. Fiat and Hyundai. The Italian and Korean Automotive Industry

Useful data (to be checked) are available in
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/south-korea/italy?sc=XE34