1. The Economic High School
What emerges from the legislative decree of school reform n.226 of October 17 is a novelty to be carefully evaluated. It is a question of understanding whether the modern social, economic, business, and legal sciences will be able to introduce an element of novelty with respect to the prevailing humanistic culture of our high school courses. The affirmation of an area of knowledge that educates the choice in the use of resources, the management of businesses, the functioning of markets, legal regulations would be welcome. Many young people need to be oriented on the issues of modernity and complexity as well as to be approached to university courses in economics, law, political science, statistics, and sociology. The hope is that also in Italy the economy and social sciences will be able to obtain a prominent place in the educational system, similar to the one they already occupy in other European countries. In the UK, a quarter of high school students who complete their A2 studies at the age of 18Level choose business economics (business economics) or economics (political economics) studies. In France, the Lycée ES (Economic and Social) is second in terms of the number of students enrolled in high schools only to the scientific one, surpassing the students who attend classical and humanistic studies. It will be possible to verify the feasibility of this wish within a certain number of years, by subjecting the provisions of the reform to the scrutiny of experience.
2. The Educational Profile
The study plan and the specific learning objectives envisaged by the legislative decree configure a non-terminal course for the new economic high school, as indeed any high school should be by axiom. The economic high school has in fact only two addresses (institutional and corporate); OSAs have a predominantly cultural and non-professional character; the hours dedicated in the three-year period to specialization courses are only 20% of the total hours; the in-depth hours dedicated to specific sectors (there are five in the corporate address and four in the institutional one) are optional.
The economic high school has not undergone the reduction to a technical-professional course suffered by the technological high school, where instead the courses are eight and 50% of the total hours is dedicated to specific courses of the courses.
3. Welcome Then To a Modern High School Centered On Economics
The social science richest in cultural and epistemological values. Economic studies have acquired expansive strength in recent decades thanks to the approach given in the 1930s by Lionel Robbins. The English economist, defining economics as a science “that studies human conduct as a relationship between scarce aims and means applicable to alternative uses”, favored the expansion of his field of investigation to analyze every human behavior that made the accounts with the problems of choice. The connections with other social disciplines, with the humanities and sciences have thus become more and more numerous. Economics tends to suggest its own cognitive categories to other fields of knowledge. This positive expansion of the economy, which worries those scholars who consider it as “imperialistic”, it must not, however, involve an excessively formalistic and mathematical role. Economics must retain its character as an open and dynamic social science, based on cognitive pillars of a logical-theoretical, historical-social-value and operational nature.
4. Much Remains To Be Done
However, to qualify the economic high school with a clear high school slant, given that the legislative text presents not a few ambiguities. The study plan is fragmented into an excessive number of disciplines, the hours dedicated to the quantitative-mathematical-statistical area are insufficient, the FBOs exclude business economics from the compulsory teaching of students of an economic high school, relegating it to the business address, for some subjects (Italian and history) we refer to the OSA of the classical high school when instead it would be useful to decline them towards economic contents.
Why was the economy born as an offshoot of Scottish moral philosophy in the 1700s? How can mathematical studies on the problems of the maximum constrained with the method of infinitesimal calculus help economic reasoning? Why does physics provide economics with the notion of equilibrium? How can history make us understand the most recent international dynamics of political and economic systems? At the same time, a more decisive high school cut will leave more space for the training of professionals relating to the different levels and management functions of the education and professional training supply chain of regional competence, identifying them with closer contact with the business world and needs. Local professionals. As is well known, this is the most critical point of the reform.
5. Teaching based on skills
Becomes indispensable for bringing together the different areas of knowledge. The interrelationships between the great economic-social, humanistic and scientific cultural areas and an active teaching methodology can be developed by reasoning about the skills that can be developed in the economic high school. They can be grouped into: a) competences common to all high schools, which see general culture turning to consider economic, business and legal aspects (to give an example, capturing the historical and philosophical data of the origin of political economy); b) Economic tuition in Singapore, business and legal orientation skills; c) mainly directional skills, who see economic knowledge turning to humanistic or scientific knowledge to strengthen the cognitive skills of the address (for example, use mathematical, statistical, probabilistic and financial tools in economic and business problems); d) transversal skills (analysis, problem solving, communication and relationship, creativity) particularly rich in this area of disciplines.
There is a large area of work on teaching by skills, in order to best qualify the economic high school.
6. One Last Question.
If economics and social sciences deserve a high school, it means attesting to their general cultural value. It is therefore good to think about how to consolidate citizenship education in all educational paths from the first two years, in harmony with what is happening in all European schools.