article_snippet: How could Dante's land become "ignorant" and will the government's plans to institute yet another education reform succeed in turning some donkeys -- if not into nerds -- at least into smart pupils?
article_snippet: Italians were once "literate" -- as in "Latin-speakers and Latin-writers" -- grammar-savvy, poetry lovers, rhetoric freaks and great philosophers.
article_snippet: The loss of Latin teaching in schools is at the root of the problem.
article_snippet: Learning Latin assists in learning Italian and other languages as well as opening the mind to all fields of knowledge.
article_snippet: It's been no secret across generations of scholars that being familiar with the complexity of Latin phrase structure and idioms is positive for students.
article_snippet: Up until 1970, Latin was taught in primary and middle schools: kids learned to translate works by Virgil without using a dictionary and to recite chunks of the "Divine Comedy" and poems by Carducci, Leopardi and Manzoni.
article_snippet: Families think learning Latin and Greek is pointless because it won't help Families kids find a job, which is wrong.
article_snippet: A series of education reforms in the past few years has lowered the quality of teaching by reducing public resources and the hours of Latin and Italian language learning, which teaching unions say has had a negative impact on pupils' text comprehension skills.
article_snippet: Latin teaching should be given more space but in a new way: Not through useless translations (what do kids care about Seneca's "Treaty on Birds?") but through open debates and analyses on ancient texts that are still worthwhile studying today.
article_snippet: Language teaching depends on Language teaching appeal.
article_snippet: Language teaching must be sexy.
highlights_snippet: The approach to teaching Latin in Italian schools needs a makeover, Silvia Marchetti says .