For generations it has been the collective rite of passage that marks the beginning of adult life. Even if today it has stripped a bit of its value, given that high school graduates often already have a university place in their pocket. Certainly, high school graduation is the ‘grand finale’ of five years spent at school dreaming of the future to come, beautiful for some, damned for others. In Cesena high schools there are over 1,100 (and half a million throughout Italy) students struggling with the final rush to obtain the coveted piece of paper.
After the pandemic emergency, since last year there has been the return of the State exam in full swing, with two written tests decided by the Ministry, a third test only for the areas in which it is foreseen, oral interview in a multidisciplinary key , commissions made up of three commissioners internal and external to the school institution and with an external president. We start tomorrow, promptly at 8.30, with the first written test, the same for everyone, aimed at ascertaining both the mastery of the Italian language and the expressive, logical-linguistic and critical skills. The Ministry provides seven tracks relating to the artistic, literary, historical, philosophical, scientific, technological, economic and social fields. The following day it is the turn of the second paper concerning the disciplines characterizing the individual study paths. And therefore, Greek for Classics and mathematics for Scientific, business economics for the technical institutes in ‘Administration, finance and marketing’ and topography for the one in ‘Construction, environment and territory’. The last piece is the oral test, which also concerns the transversal teaching of civic education, and is aimed at evaluating both the candidate’s ability to grasp the connections between the knowledge acquired and his educational, cultural and professional profile.
Even the scoring, disrupted by Covid-19, has returned to normal. The school career will account for 40 percent of the total (in the fifth year with an average above 9 you can accumulate up to 15 points), while the other 60 percent of the score will be played by the graduates in the exam for a maximum of 60 points: 20 for each of the two papers and the same number for the interview. At the disposal of the examination commission there is then a bonus of 5 points, to be awarded in full or only in part to deserving candidates who, however, between credit and tests, are unable to reach the maximum mark.
Returning to the topic of Italian, the ‘toto-traces’ has been raging for weeks as per tradition, with predictions based on dates, anniversaries or authors of literature. It would not be a surprise if, as has already happened in the past, alongside famous names there were also those less known to most. For Orizzontescuola.it (online journalist newspaper on the world of school) a ‘papable’ author could be Gabriele D’Annunzio, considering the 160th anniversary of his birth celebrated in 2023. Also Luigi Pirandello (perhaps with an excerpt from ‘One, nobody and centomila’) is among the favorites together with Italo Svevo and Giovanni Verga. On the current affairs front, there is certainly no shortage of ‘hot’ topics that could end up being developed on the foolscap: artificial intelligence with all its implications, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the one in Ukraine. And who knows, Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist who invented the atomic bomb (the 120th anniversary of its birth this year) could also appear, with his phrase that went down in history: “I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.
