The term awareness is perhaps not used as much as it should be, especially in relation to the growth path of us students.

‘Awareness‘ is synonymous with ‘consciousness‘, ‘cognition‘. It means being informed and sentient about everything that happens around us.

However, these are not the only facets: to be aware means to have a critical look at what surrounds us, to process our knowledge and notions in order to be able to apply them in life, but above all to be able to develop thinking about facts.

Our being aware, therefore, leads us to the ability to have an overview of the world, which is full of news, wars, exhilarating facts, development, technology and much more.

Why should we young people be the first to be involved in awareness?

The answer might seem obvious: because it is we young people who can really change things in the future. It is not just that though; it is us who will be the future ruling class, it is us who will write, vote and pass laws, it is us who will have to fight if something does not suit us. It is we young people who already have the right to vote, which, as our Constitution states, is the main instrument by which the people exercise their sovereignty.

Are we able to navigate our way through all this, in a future that is no longer even close? How can we think of exercising one of our greatest rights, the vote, without knowing what surrounds us?

Analysis of the problem

Reflection on the problems that can be caused by not being aware starts with this: voting.

Participation in politics, which is fundamental for expressing our preferences, is drastically decreasing among young people, whether we are talking about voting for the mayor of our country, or casting our vote in political or European elections. Therefore, the percentage of invisible participation among young people is very low: fewer and fewer students participate even indirectly in political life, with ever lower numbers among activities such as signing online petitions or taking part in civic consultations.

The ISTAT report ‘Political Participation in Italy – Year 2024’ points out that only 16.3% of 14-17 year olds are informed about politics at least weekly. This figure increases to 34.6% between the ages of 18 and 24. On the other hand, a significant proportion never get informed about politics: 60.3% between the ages of 14 and 17 and 35.4% between the ages of 18 and 24.

Obviously, it is not only young people who are to blame: ISTAT describes that between 2003 and 2024, invisible participation declined steadily for the entire Italian population; it is a phenomenon that has been observed, therefore, for more than 20 years.

However, it is clear that, until now, not enough responsibility has been given to the new generations

All the numbers just listed must ring alarm bells for us: our peers are largely no longer interested in informing themselves and discussing politics, and this also leads to the obvious decline in election turnout, a phenomenon we have been clearly observing for a few years now.

As the ISTAT data then show, it is not only interest in political issues that is waning but also the desire to inform oneself, to read the news online and to watch the news: the risk is that we have no means of gaining an insight into everything that surrounds us. A risk that often already materialises in everyday life.

Information in everyday life is fundamental: it is what makes us free; free to think for ourselves and free to have an opinion, a critical thought, an idea to defend and argue. Information inevitably leads us to reflect on a certain fact, which triggers in us the desire to investigate, to think.

Why not take advantage of this extraordinary freedom of thought, which fortunately we can exercise in a free and democratic country like Italy? Why leave everything to chance and allow our future not to call us to the forefront?

It is clear that everything is linked: from our desire and ability to inform ourselves comes critical thinking, which allows us to argue our ideas. Our thinking then leads us to a party or a figure who can represent us in parliament: hence the need to vote in elections.

Therefore, without information, we are becoming disinterested in what should concern us most: our future. We must learn to ensure that it is not left in the hands of others.

Causes and possible solutions

Problems of this kind do not arise overnight: they are the result of something that did not work, was not foreseen or was deliberately made inaccessible to a certain segment of the population.

It is clear that there are causes responsible for this drop in awareness.

The eternal defendant: the school

The first cause that inevitably led to the problems described above is the school. The place where the new generations are educated and brought up, and consequently to life, hardly ever leaves room to talk about the world around us. Particularly in high school, it is essential to address certain topics and current issues, because school is the place where we students spend – or should spend – most of our days, from September to June, and it is the institution that shapes us to become the women and men we will be tomorrow. Why is there never any time or desire to talk about the present, when all we do from an early age is study the past?

Clearly, the responsibility in this case lies not with us students, but with those who have never thought to devote time to learning about the present. Why study the great kings of the Sumerians or the Babylonians at length if we do not know who governs us, what they propose and what is happening in the world today?

European case studies

In Denmark, for example, compulsory school curricula require students to take history and social studies as compulsory subjects. It is therefore a matter of confronting history with issues related to society, institutions and understanding the contemporary world. The objective of these courses is therefore not only to learn historical facts, but also to study and understand society, culture and social phenomena, preparing students to participate in democratic society. Furthermore, in Denmark, the lessons are interactive and focused on dialogue and debate: each student is invited and encouraged to express his or her opinion on the topics covered, being adequately considered. All this leads to the development of social skills, empathy, critical thinking and awareness. In Italy, these skills are unfortunately underdeveloped in the school world.

In the UK, too, education for citizenship and awareness is at the heart of the curriculum: the national curriculum includes Citizenship as a compulsory subject for state secondary schools. The primary objective, as stated by the British government itself, is to develop awareness and understanding of democracy, government, and how laws are made and obeyed.

The aim is to foster critical thinking on political and social issues by discussing and arguing effectively. The UK government also issues specific guidelines on how to deal with sensitive political or social topics in the classroom in a neutral and impartial manner, to ensure that discussions are handled responsibly without political propaganda.

Many other European countries have adopted similar models: in Germany, communicative skills and active participation in society are promoted in citizenship education lessons; in France ,éducation morale et civique is a compulsory subject that aims to link historical and institutional concepts with current events; in Poland , recent reforms on civic education want to introduce compulsory subjects dedicated to responsible citizenship and active learning.

As can be understood, many states have already thought about the awareness of their students. It is not a question of revolutionising the education system, but of focusing on and investing more in the civic education of pupils.

Why not replicate the Danish approach to discussions on society? Why not study the objectives and guidelines of the British government to debate democracy, awareness and legislature, and then try to apply these notions in our country as well?

Educational reforms are not ‘zero cost’

By now we as Italy have been overtaken, and this is also shown by the numbers: according to Eurostat‘s findings in 2023,Italy spends 3.9 per cent of GDP on educationand is third to last in Europe in this ranking, above only Romania (3.4 per cent) andIreland (2.8 per cent).

To change things and to be more aware, we do not need utopias, but anation that is truly interested in the good of us students, that supports us by taking measures to improve our approach to today’s world and society and thus increase our awareness. Starting, perhaps, with training and paying teachers adequately, so as to make schools competitive again in a fast-paced world.

The lowering of the attention threshold

The problem of people’s attention spans is becoming more and more serious: the smartphones we always have in our pockets are increasingly eroding our ability to stay focused and attentive to something for a certain amount of time. The speed of social media, of communications, of the means we have in our hands is getting us used to an ever faster daily routine. There are, however, activities that still require the same amount of time as always, which it is difficult to speed up: reading, for example; becoming decently informed, watching a news programme or a documentary. Seeking, in short, valid answers to our questions.

To find these answers, it is not enough to look at a headline or ‘scroll’ through short thirty-second videos; it takes time to get the full picture. All this time, however, now seems lost to us, inexpensible given the amount of things we can do in a few seconds with a phone in our hands.

It is a serious problem that involves all generations, not just the young. However, we need to make a synthesis and not just antitheses: looking for concrete solutions suited to the era in which we live, inextricably linked to the way we communicate.

Communicating politics in the third millennium

As already pointed out, the time the population devotes to information has drastically decreased. It is therefore clear that the way news is told must also adapt to the new requirements.

There has already been a lot of progress in this: all the major newspapers, news channels and their broadcasters, but also the journalists themselves, have adopted new ways of informing, e.g. through videos on social media or news flashes with short but effective explanations. Perhaps, however, large-scale dissemination of all this is lacking: the channels are there, but many young people are not familiar with them.

When recounting developments on major current and political issues, there is always a tendency to take it too much for granted that the population is informed and sufficiently familiar with what is being discussed. Young people in particular, on hearing or reading certain terms, immediately dismiss the content because they are unable to grasp its meaning. The objective difficulty of certain news is difficult to hide, but simplifying the explanations, perhaps in content specifically made for the inexperienced, could be the key to bringing information and awareness closer.

The political class also plays an important role: if on TV you see nothing but heated confrontations, shouting and sometimes provocative bickering, how can you expect to approach all those who know little or nothing about politics, or who are simply not interested in it?

If educational and constructive debates, based first and foremost on respect, are not promoted, they will never gain the attention of the majority of the population. Positive and fair debate would not only enable young people to acquire key skills of argumentation, clarity and content knowledge, but would also lead to a progressive development of critical thinking on important issues.

Aware population, healthy nation

As we have seen, there are many ways to raise our awareness. The first responsibility lies with us young people: we must care about our future, in which we can invest starting with information.

However, the state also bears responsibility: the new generations seem not to be the focus of attention . In many countries, measures and reforms have already been adopted to foster debate and analysis on issues of society, current affairs and legislation.

Now it is up to us to ask our school to put aside the crayons and give us the ink to write the present. Looking to the future.