"But we fill schools with digital technology instead of literature? It's crazy."

Italian philosopher Umberto Galimberti argues the rupture of Covid is an ideal time to re-examine and reform the disaster that is modern schooling. "Philosophy must be extended to all schools," he argues, "and included in the first grade." The schools, furthermore, “should take advantage of Covid to make structural investments that change it forever, how to reduce pupils per class: no more than twelve, if we really wants to educate our young people. [Instead, they are producing] more and more nihilists, deprived of the future and induced to live at night or to take drugs and drink because during the day no one recognises them."

“[School teachers] should be selected using personality tests, to prevent teachers unable to teach and lacking any passion for their profession, from ruining in 40 years of their career the life of entire generations of students.”
    "[Furthermore], I would expel parents from schools. They must be expelled from school because their presence prevents the child from taking on his own responsibilities. Parents are interested in promoting their child -- and the teacher, to avoid appeals to the TAR [Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale], another institution that should be eliminated by law, ends up promoting everyone.
    "And in high schools, the children have to be left alone without the protection of their parents, they have to learn to see what they can do without that protection. If it is prolonged over the years, as I see it, it leads to the indolence we see in adulthood. At school you have to become men, to grow up.
    "But in this way a meritocratic structure is not built.... And until it comes to merit, we won't have any civil society. This is my school reform but it will never happen.
    "At school you have to bring literature back.... Literature is the place where you learn about things like love, despair, tragedy, irony, suicide. If you learn to deal with these concepts, you are polite and respectful, and can avoid doing the tragic things that we periodically witness. What kind of society we are building?”
    "But we fill schools with digital technology instead of literature? It's crazy. We look on the trains: while in other countries young people read books, we play with our mobile phones. Today kids know two hundred words, but how can you formulate a thought if you lack words? You don't think or think little if you don't have the words."

[Hat tip Marco Fois]