It is true that man never learns anything from history. But the problem is that he often doesn't study it.
A survey by Skuola.net says that for one in two high school graduates, history stops at the Second World War, if not before. In reality this is nothing new: it has been like this more or less since the Second World War. The school years remain the same, History proceeds inexorably and bureaucracy is the only thing that improves with the passing of History, adding orientation courses, safety courses, school-work alternation, strikes and assemblies. Maybe it's because they haven't studied '68 that kids fall back into it every time.
This is why everyone talks about the Israeli-Palestinian issue – it's just one example – without knowing anything about it. And that's the moral of the story.
Then there's the moral tale. They will tell you that there can be no future without knowing the past. That history teaches us not to repeat mistakes.
That knowledge is freedom. Rhetoric.
The truth is that when the Minister of Education Valditara said that «Wasting a year studying dinosaurs is nonsense» they laughed at him. And yesterday's survey says that 51% of high school graduates, rather than wasting months in the first school cycles talking about prehistory, would prefer to get to the end of the 20th century.
Alright. Let's console ourselves. History will stop at the Second World War. But politics, even before that. At the mercy of fascism.
And the question is: will history absolve us?