Teaching Contemporary Italian Culture

TLDR: A workshop on contemporary Italy was organized by the Association of the Middlebury Italian School Alumni in 1982 and repeated in 1983 as mentioned in this paper, with the focus on the contemporary society of the country whose language they teach.

Abstract: 'hile not abandoning their interest in matters of a pedagogical nare, foreign language teachers have in recent years frequently called for workshops on the contemporary society of the country whose language they teach. Accordingly, the Association of the Middlebury Italian School Alumni attempted to respond to this kind of interest, if only minimally, by suggesting to Dr. Clavio Ascari, the Director of the Middlebury College Italian School, that a workshop on contemporary Italy be included as part of the school's summer offerings. This was accomplished by enlisting the cooperation of a native scholar and an academician, well-versed in the contemporary scene, and an American professor of Italian whose experience in language pedagogy would guide the participants in their endeavors to relate the informational aspects of the workshop to their own course objectives. Professors Enrico Pozzi of the University of Rome and Remo Trivelli of the University of Rhode Island agreed to the undertaking. This workshop was offered for the first time in the summer of 1982 and repeated in 1983. Of the eleven people enrolled over the two summers, ten were teachers of Italian (eight at high school level and two at college level). The exception was a college teacher of English whose interest in the topic of the workshop was her motivating force. Since two weeks were hardly sufficient to accomplish the double task of gleaning information about contemporary Italy and learning to adapt it to classroom use, each day was very carefully planned and divided, specifically into a two-hour morning session and a one-hour afternoon/evening session. In the morning session Pozzi discussed contemporary Italy since 1968, a country in transition as the result of change in many areas of society: e.g., youth, the media, government, and education. Readings were based on two collections of essays, Dal '68 a oggi come siamo e come eravamo and Il trionfo del privato (both volumes Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1980), in addition to a number of articles in periodicals and newspapers. In the afternoon/evening session Trivelli guided the participants in determining the best methods for in-