He became world famous with his essay The Usefulness of the Useless (Quaderns Crema), a defense of the humanities and the classics both for education and for life. In the essay, the Italian professor and philosopher Nuccio Ordine (Diamante, 1958) denounced the harm that current utilitarianism causes in school, university, research: what does not give immediate benefit is cut. A task that was yesterday recognized with the 2023 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. In a conversation with La Vanguardia, Ordine affirms that “the values ​​I have defended now have more strength with the prestige of this award” and he explains that he dedicates it “to the teachers who silently change the lives of students around the world”.
Because by Ordine, today the humanities are threatened. “They suffer from the same threat as scientific research: the idea that we should choose only the activities that produce money. That is why unfairly in our society reading a book or admiring a painting means wasting time. Doing scientific research just to answer curiosity, to learn about nature, is a waste of time. There is a very strong pressure for scientific research to be short-term, quickly profitable. Today defending the humanities and basic scientific research means defending the future of humanityâ€.
School and university are battlefields. “Society makes students believe that they have to study to get a diploma and then earn money in the world of work. It is a miserable view of education. The first task is to make our young people understand that the main goal of education is to be better, to transform into cultured women and men and then, with what they have studied with love, they will be good professionals. If you choose to be a doctor or engineer to make money, it means that the ethical level of the profession is going down, because the goal is not to be a good doctor or engineerâ€.
In this sense, the pedagogical line of education by skills does not convince him. “The idea of ​​competences, that knowledge must immediately have a practical meaning, is a way of making education miserable. For me today the main task is to make people understand the great values ​​of society; school and university must be critical laboratories. Today they have to train soldiers for the world of work, who are passive consumers. They must leave school with the same weight and ideas. It’s a horror. You can’t imagine a more humane humanity like that.”
Nor with the Government of Giorgia Meloni in his country. “What can I say? These rulers who defend false values, who consider emigrants as enemies, who think of building walls, who have no respect for diversity and human rights. Total madness, I am very worried about the Italian situationâ€. Even so, he believes that the election of Meloni, “a lady who has training in far-right parties”, is the effect of “a false information” that is giving wings to populism around the world. “Italy is not like that, it is not fascist, it has a very different feeling, but today communication can make people understand things that are false, that are lies”.
