L'illusione dei libri di testo: racchiudere un'educazione civica aperta

The 92/2019 Italian Law on Civic Education has prompted an immediate response by the Italian publishing market to adapt to the new normative demand induced by the national educational policy: labels, keywords, activities and contents specifically identifiable or explicitly dedicated to “civic education” have flourished in the 2020/2021 editions of textbooks for schools of all levels and, in deference to the reaffirmed transversality of the “new” subject, for every other discipline. Be they digital or paper editions, and whatever the ability of each publishing house to distinguish between the two by enhancing the pedagogical potential of the different media, a systematic analysis of this editorial offer reveals above all the statutory inadequacy of the textbook product in itself with respect to the substantial pedagogical objectives to which Civic Education and more generally the development of the key competence of citizenship, as defined by the latest European Recommendation on the subject, should aim. In this contribution we offer this kind of systematic and critical analysis, documenting and motivating as thoroughly as possible the epistemological and methodological reasons for this inadequacy of the textbook product, with reference to the most popular publishing houses in Italian primary schools in 2020/2021 and their new publishing offers for 2021/2022.