Is there a moment when you go from sponges to sieves? In one of the most critical historical phases for the school, Patrizia Salvatore – teacher of Philosophy and History at the Messina classical high school “La Farina” and PhD in political, historical and philosophical-symbolic sciences – tries to give a profound meaning to the educational relationship: the characterization lies entirely in the dialectical relationship between teacher and student. The volume «From Sponges to Sieves. A teaching-learning experience of the Cambridge IGCSE History Syllabus” which the teacher, with co-editor Clare James, published with Di Nicolò editions.
Salvatore starts from a question: why focus unilaterally on a single perspective? «Authentic communication – she answers first of all to herself – occurs when each person is able to imagine the other’s point of view». And it is here that the more traditional approach is overturned: a teacher understood as a mere transmitter who fills vases with his own knowledge cannot help but fail in the task. Cooperative learning activities and constant dialogue bear witness to this in the classroom: “The class becomes a choir in which the voices, each with its own timbre, are harmonized by the teacher.”
The book outlines ideas and reflections on the experience of teaching the Cambridge IGCSE History programme. In this approach, philosophy is the foundation of history. And teaching-learning allows children to transform from sponges to sieves (to return to the initial question), in a critical construction of knowledge in the literal sense of the Greek «krinomai», that is, evaluate, discern, choose. Written in English «not only because the International History Syllabus is in English but also with a view to an invitation to open up to other cultures», Salvatore’s work ends with a poem, the only page in Italian. Salvatore writes with passion; demonstrates that he loves his profession, which today is made more and more complicated by a thousand difficulties that could demotivate the serious teacher. And the feeling is that of a new Sisyphus – a happy metaphor – who finds himself dragging the boulder to the top of the mountain, only to then see it fall disastrously into the valley. The author, however, finds the strength of optimism which is embodied in the common commitment: to roll the boulder to the top together, because “we have the privilege of carrying out a constructive profession, in a world in which only education can save us”.