PRO CIVE: PROgymnasmata for Citizenship, Inclusion and Valid Education -PRIN 2022

This project focuses on progymnasmata, preliminary exercises for rhetorical training, which formed the basis of Greco-Roman

education between the 1st and 5th centuries AD. Recent studies have observed how they helped to shape the cultural and civic

fabric of the ancient world, whereas the didactic experiments achieved in foreign schools and universities verified the propaedeutic

nature of the progymnasmata for the maturation of citizenship skills. However, there are several shortcomings in this framework: the

lack of similar experiences of didactic experimentation in Italy; the absence of a multidisciplinary approach that considers the

benefits of using progymnasmata at school today not only in relation to modern learning theories, but also to the context of the

communication processes that characterize the public debate (new media). Furthermore, the interest in the Latin progymnasmata

appears neglected as compared to Greek texts, although the study of the Latin curriculum, marked by the relationship of the

progymnasmata with declamation, provides more fruitful reflections on the objectives and methods of rhetorical education in view of

a civic education centered on speech, public engagement, and inclusiveness (humanitas). This is even more important especially

since recent European programs (not least the PNRR) insist on the contribution that the study of humanities can make to improve

the quality of democracy, to develop an active and inclusive citizenship with fitting repercussions on human well-being.

Our project aims to study progymnasmata in the historical framework of ancient education and in the recent framework of didactic

experimentation through the convergence of three investigation perspectives. First, the historical-philological research, entrusted to

Latin rhetoric experts, will define the technical aspects of the teaching strategies relating to the progymnasmata with a particular

focus on the Latin context and to two exercises (thesis, ethopoeia), which provide the students with the skills required by public

communication (argumentation skills, critical judgment, role taking, empathy). Secondly, the pedagogy will enhance the

progymnasmata within the framework of current pedagogical models and will structure the didactic experimentations that will be

realised at high schools. The contexts characterized by educational poverty will be chosen to verify the benefits of the

progymnasmata for the civic education. Finally, the sociological analysis will evaluate the progymnasmata in relation to the current

dynamics of the public debate and it will test whether these exercises can model the comunicative processes of the social media

(where citizens traditionally excluded from public communication interact with the risk of information short-circuits capable of

spreading negative and divisive contents), and favor the creation of alternative flows of messages capable of impacting toxic

communicative situations marked by social disadvantage.